JOSEPH  M9D0N0UGH 
RARE  BOOKS 

ALBANY -NY. 


THE   BURNS   ALMANAC. 


PRESS  OF 

WAI.TER  W.    REID, 

NEW  YORK. 


NOTE. 

The  compiler  will  esteem  it  a  favor  to  receive  a  memoran- 
dum of  additional  items  or  corrections  from  anyone,  so  that  in 
the  event  of  another  edition  of  The  Ai^manac  being  called 
for,  it  may  be  made  as  perfect  as  possible.  Address,  care  of 
the  Publisher.  A  sufficient  space  has  been  left  at  the  end  of 
each  date  for  the  insertion  of  any  items  that  may  suggest 
themselves  to  the  reader  ;  while  for  more  extended  notes  a  few 
blank  pages  have  been  provided  at  the  end  of  the  book. 

I  have  to  acknowledge,  with  thanks,  the  valuable  assist- 
ance rendered  me  in  compiling  the  book,  by  my  brother,  Peter 
Ross,  Lly.  D.,  New  York,  and  John  Muir,  F.  S.  A.  Scot^ 
Glasgow. 

JOHN   D.    ROSS. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.archive.org/details/almanacburnsrecoOOrossricli 


10 


••    •  •      •  i    « 


THE 


BURNS  ALMANAC 


A  RECORD  OF  DATES,  EVENTS,  Etc., 
CONNECTED  WITH  THE  POET. 


BY 

JOHN   D.    ROSS,   LL.  D., 
Editor  of  "Burnsiana,"  "Round  Bums'  Grave,"  "Bums*  Clarinda,"  etc. 


New  York  : 
THE   RAEBURN  BOOK   COMPANY, 
,185  Grand  Strei'it.,,, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 


"Edinburgh,  Dec.  7,  1786. 

" I  am  in  a  fair  way  of  becoming  as  eminent 

as  Thomas  a  Kempis  or  John  Bunyan  ;  and  you  may  expect 
henceforth  to  see  my  birthday  inserted  among  the  wonderful 
events  in  the  Poor  Robin's  and  Aberdeen  Almanacks,  along 
with  the  Black  Monday  and  the  Battle  of  Bothwell  Bridge." 

— Burns  to  Gavin  Hamilton. 


That  far-off  day  in  Edinburgh  town, 

When  Burns  first  tasted  fame, 
His  fancy  wove  his  coming  crown, 

And  saw  his  famous  name : 
For  was  he  not  on  upward  track  ? 

With  "Bunyan"  soon  to  shine; 
And  in  "  Poor  Robin's  Almanac" 

To  get  a  birthday  line — 
Forthwith,  that  day. 

Now  has  he  worn  his  fadeless  crown 

For  a  hundred  years  or  more ; 
With  all  the  world  for  Edinburgh  town, 

To  harken  and  adore : 
None  now  more  "eminent"  than  he, 

On  his  mastersinger's  throne, 
Among  the  world's  best  company ; 

With  an  Almanac  his  own — 
Herewith,  this  day. 

1898.  Hunter  MacCulloch. 


THIS  VOI^UME  IS  RESPECTFXJI,I,Y 
DEDICATED  TO 

The    Hon.    CHARLES    H.    COLLINS, 
Hii^i^BORO,  Ohio,  U.  S.  A., 

IN  APPRECIATION  OF  HIS  EFFORTS  BOTH  BY  VOICE  AND  PEN  TO  EXTEND 
THE  FAME  OF 

ROBERT  BURNS  IN  AMERICA. 


265481 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


The  Burns  Ai.manac.  Poem.   MacCui,i.och.  Back 

OF  TITI,K  PAGE. 

Al,MANAC, 13 

Robert  Burns'  Famii^y, 89 

wli,i.iam  burnes'  famii.y,         .....  89 

Prices  obtainabi^e  in  1898  for  a  first  edition  of 

Burns, .  90 

List  of  subscribers  for  the  first  edition,       .  91 

Seven  Epochs  in  the  Life  of  Burns,        ...  91 

CHRONO1.0GICA1,  Table  of  Burns'  Life  and  Works,  93 

Burns  Ci^ubs  in  America, 113 

Statues  and  Busts  of  Burns, 114 

Books  subscribed  for  by  Burns,      .       .       .       .  115 

A  Century  of  Burns  Biography.    Wai,i,ace,    .       .115 

The  Storx  of  Ci^arinda, 124 

Burns  in  Westminster  Abbey, 126 

Misconceptions  Regarding  Burns.    Ross,     .        .  134 

Fi,owERS  Mentioned  by  Burns, 139 

The  Funerai.  of  Robert  Burns,      ....  143 

Manuscript  Notes, 148 


THE   BURNS  ALMANAC. 


JANUARY. 
1  — 


"This  Day  Time  Winds,"  etc.     Composed  1791. 
**  Epistle  to  Davie,  a  brother  poet."   Composed  1785. 
''Elegy  on  the  Year  1788."     Composed  1789. 
"To  Miss  Logan."     Composed  1787. 


Article  entitled  "A  Century  of  Burns'  Biography," 
by  William  Wallace  in  Chambers's  Journal,  1896. 


Rev.  Andrew  Jeffrey  died  1795. 

Robert  Burness,  uncle  of  the  poet,  died  1789. 


The  Nevvbery  Classics  "Burns."     Edited  by  J.  R. 
Tutin.      Published  1893. 


14  t//£  '^VI^NS 'ALMANAC— JANUARY, 


Rev.  Dr.  William  Burnside,  Dumfries,  died  1806. 
Alexander  Fraser  Tytler,  died  18 13. 


6 


*0  Poortith  Cauld  and  Restless  Love."     Composed 
1793. 


Gilbert  Bums  initiated  into  St.  James's  Lodge,  F.  & 

A.  M.      1786. 
Allan  Ramsay  died  1758. 


s 


The  Poet  defines  his  religious  creed  in  a  letter  to 
Clarinda,   1788. 


Highland   Mary,"   published  by  Alexander  Gard- 
ner, Paisley,  1894. 


10 


Robert  Graham,  of  Fin  try,  died  181 5. 
The  Caledonian  Hunt  subscribed  for   100  copies  of 
the  Poet's  second  edition,  1787. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JANUARY.            15 
11  


Dr.  John  Mackenzie  died  1737. 


12 


The  Poet  present  at  grand  Masonic   meeting,   St. 

Andrew's  Lodge,  Edinburgh,  1787. 
Col.  Wm.  Fullarton,  died  1754. 


13 


Albany,  (N.  Y.)  Burns  Club,  organized  1854. 
Peter  Pindar  (Dr.  John  Walcot)  died  18 10. 
John  Wilson  ("Dr.  Hornbook")  died  1839. 


14 


Mrs.  Burns,  mother  of  the  poet,  died  1820. 
Rev.  Dr.  George  H.  Baird  died  1840. 
William  Creech,  publisher,  died  1815. 
Lucy  Johnston  (Mrs.  Lucy  Oswald  of  Anchincruive) 
died  1798. 

Henry  Mackenzie,  author  of  "The  Man  of  Feeling," 
died  1 83 1. 


15 


The  poet  describes  his  favorite  authors  in  a  letter  to 
John  Murdoch,  1783. 


I6  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JANUARY. 


16 


The  Scottish  Parliment  sanctions  the  Union,  1707. 


17 


Brodie,  of  Brodie,  died  1824. 


IS 


"Burnsiana,"  vol.  i,  issued  1892. 


19 


'Burns     Chronicle,"      Vol.     III.,     edited     by     D. 
M 'Naught,  issued  1894. 


20 


Mrs.  Candlish,    the    Miss  Smith  of  the  "  Mauchline 

Belles",  died  1854. 
Mrs.  Stephen  Kemble,  died  1841. 


21 


Dr.  John  Moore,  died  1802. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JANUARY.  17 

22 


**  Round  Bums'  Grave,"  enlarged  edition,  published 

1892. 
Margaret  Orr  (Mrs.  Paton)  died  1837. 


23 


Article  on  Bonnie  Jean,  by  Archibald  Munro,  in  The 

Scotsman^  1894. 
Right  Hon.  William  Pitt,  died  1806. 


24 


* 'Farewell  to  Clarinda, "  sent  to  Mrs.  McLehose,  1 788. 
Earlston  Burns  Club,  instituted  1885. 


25 


Birthday  of  the  poet,  1759. 

Pollockshaws  Burns  Club,  instituted  1886. 

Portobello  Burns  Club,  instituted  1892. 

Thornliebank  Burns  Club,  instituted  1891. 

Carlisle  Burns  Club,  instituted  1889. 

Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  delivered  his  great  ora- 
tion on  the  poet  before  the  New  York  Burns 
Club,  1859. 

The  Burns'  Society  of  New  York,  Organized  1871. 

Monument  erected  to  Highland  Mary  in  Greenock 
Churchyard,  1842. 

"Sonnet  on  the  author's  birthday."    Composed  1793. 


i8  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JANUARY. 

25tt\    contlntjteci. 

Foundation  stone  of  the  Doon  Monument,  laid  1820. 

The  Glasgow  Monument  unveiled  1887. 

John  Maxwell,   of  Terraughty  and   Munches,  died 

1814. 
Airdrie  Burns  Club,  instituted  1885. 
Glasgow-Carrick  Bums  Club,  instituted  1859. 
Fairfield  Go  van  Burns  Club,  instituted  1886. 
Arlington  Burns  Club,  instituted  1887. 
Barlinne  Burns  Club,  instituted  1893. 
Kim  Burns  Club,  instituted  1892. 
Derby  Burns  Chib,  instituted  1891. 
Edinburgh  (Portsburgh)  Burns  Club,  instituted  1894. 


26 

Gabriel  Richardson,  Provost  of  Dumfries,  died  1820. 
The  Poet  baptized,  1759. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JANUARY.  19 

27 


**  Isobel  Bums,"  A  Memoir,  published  in  1894. 
Alexander  Cunningham,  Jeweller,  died  181 2. 
Hamilton  Bums  Club,  instituted  1877. 


28 


Rev.  Dr.  William  Dalrymple.  Ayr,  died  18 14. 

The  Poet  recommended  for  Examiner,  Excise,  1791. 


29 


John  Orr  (last  survivor   of   the   Batchelor's   Club) 
died  1837. 


30 


James,  Earl  of  Glencairn,  died  1791. 
Preliminary  meeting  held  to  erect  statue  at  Dundee, 
1877. 


31 


Bonnie  Prince  Charlie,  died  1788. 


20  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— FEBRUARY. 

FEBRUARY. 
1   


The  Poet  affiliated  a  member  of  Canongate  Kilwin- 
ning Lodge,  No.  2,  1787. 
*'  Hey  for  a  lass  wi'  a  tocher."     Composed  1796. 


John  Rankin,  died  1810. 

Dundee  Burns  Club,  instituted  i860. 

Sir  James  Hunter  Blair,  Bart,  born  1741. 


The  Poet's  Portrait  painted  by  Nasmyth,  began  1787. 


Burns  Chronicle,"  No.  i,  edited  by  John  Muir,  F. 
S.  A.  Scot,  issued  1892. 


Thomas  Carlyle,  died  1881. 
Gavin  Hamilton,  died  1805. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— FEBRUARY.         21 


The  Poet  petitions  for  permission  to  erect  headstone 
over  the  grave  of  Robert  Ferguson,  1787. 

Miss  Mary  McPherson,  donor  of  the  Albany  (N.  Y.) 
Bums  Statue,  died  1886. 


The  Poet  visited  Ecclefechan,  1795. 
John  Maxwell,  of  Terraughtie,  born  1720. 
Copy  of  First  Kilmarnock  edition  of  the  Poems  sold 
in  Edinburgh  for  ;^572,  ($2,860)  1898. 


8 


Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  died  1587. 
Arlington  Burns  Club  instituted  1888. 
Muirkirk  Lapraik  Burns  Club  instituted  1893. 


*'0  Lassie,  Art  Thou  Sleeping  Yet,"   sent    to   Mr. 
Thomson,  1795. 


10 


Peter  Hill,  bookseller,  died  1837. 
Rev.  Dr.  James  Mackinlay,  died  1841. 


22  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— FEBRUARY. 


11 


Right  Rev.  John  Geddes,  D.  D.,  died  1799. 


12 


Bums'  dog  Luath,  killed  1784. 


13 


William  Burnes,  father  of  the  poet,  died  1784. 
George  Dempster,  M.  P.,  died  18 18. 
Col.  William  Fullarton,  died  1808. 
William  Fisher,  "  Holy  Willie,"  died  1809. 
Stuart's  Star^  started  1789. 


14 


Douglas  Graham,  ("Tarn  o'  Shanter,")  died  1811. 
Second  volume  "Johnson's  Museum, "published  1788. 


15 


Rev.  Alexander  Moodie,  died  1799. 

Rev.  Dr.  James  Steven,  died  1824. 

James  Burnes,  Provost  of  Montrose,  died  1852. 

Janet  Gibson,  ("  Racer  Jess,")  died  18 13. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— FEBRUARY.  23 

16 


Article  by  John  Muir,  entitled  ''Burns  in  German," 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  1894. 


17 


"The  Twa  Dogs,"  completed  1786. 


18 


George  Thomson,  died  1851. 

William  Dunbar,   ("  Rattlin' Roaring  Willie,")  died 
£807. 


19 


Mrs.  Scott,    (the  "  Guidwife  of  Wauchope  House,") 

died  1789. 
Rev.  Stephen  Young,  died  1819. 


20 


Bishop  Alexander  Geddes,  died  1802. 


21 


William  Nicol,  son  of  the  poet,  died  1872. 
Dr.  John  Moore,  London,  died  1802. 


24         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— FEBRUARY. 

■ 22 


Permission  granted  to  erect  headstone  on   the  g-rave 

of  Robert  Ferguson,  1787. 
"The  Inventory,"  composed  1786. 
Dr.  Adam  Ferguson,  died  1816. 
Dundee   Weekly  News  issued   a    "Burns   Centenary 

Supplement,"  1896. 


22> 


Rev.  John  Russell,  Kilmarnock,  died  181 7. 


24 


William  Gordon,  Lord  Kenmure,  executed  17 15. 
Capt.  Matthew  Henderson,  born  1737. 


25 


The  Poet  presented  with  a  copy  of  Johnson's  "  Lives 

of  the  Poets,"  1789. 
Rev.  Joseph  Kirkpatrick,  died  1824. 


26 


James  Johnson,  engraver,  died  181 1. 
Article  entitled  "  The  Burns  Centenary,"  in    Cham- 
bers's Journal^  1859. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC-FEBRUARY.  25 

27- 


Jean  Armour,  born  1767. 


28 


"The  Deil's   Awa'   wi'   the  Exciseman,"  composed 

1792. 
Lewis  Hay,  died  1800. 


29 


26  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH. 


MARCH. 


The  Poet  inaugurated  Poet  Laureate   of  Canongate 

Kilwinning  Lodge,  No.  2,  1797. 
Preface  written  for  volume  2,    Johnson's   Museum, 

1787. 
Gilbert  Burns  entered  as  a  F.  &  A.  M.,  1786. 
Niel  Gow,  died  1807. 
Rev.  Dr.  William  M'Quhae,  died  1823. 
Article  "Burns  and  Beranger,"  by  Dr.  Chas.  Mackay 

in  The  Nineteenth  Century^  1880. 
James  Smith,  merchant,  Mauchline,  born  2765. 


Anabella,  sister  of  the  poet,  died  1832. 
Prof.  John  Stuart  Blackie,  died  1895. 
John  Ramsay,  Ochtertyre,  died  18 14. 
Dunoon-Cowal  Burns  Club,  instituted  1896. 


Twin  daughters  born  to  the  poet,  1788. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH.  27 


Rev.  Dr.  Carfrae,  died  1822. 


Lord  Dare,  (William  Basil)  died  1794. 


6 


James  Dalrymple,  Orangefield,  died  1795. 

Jessie  Staig,  (Mrs.  Miller  of  Dalswinton)  died  1801. 

Ordination  of  Rev.  Dr.  James  Mackinlay,  1785. 


Bust  of  the  poet  unveiled  in   Westminster   Abbey, 
1885. 


8 


William  Cruickshank,  teacher,  died  1793. 
Glasg-ow-Ardgowan  Burns  Club,  instituted. 


William  Nicol,  son  of  the  poet,  born  1795. 
John   Logan,  of  Laight   and   Knockshinnock,    died 
1816. 


28  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH. 


lO 


*' All  About  Burns,"  published  in  New  York,  1896. 
Glasgow  Thistle  Burns  Club,  instituted  1882. 


11 


Rev.  Dr.  Bowmaker,  Dunse,  died  1797. 


12 


"  There'll  Never  be  Peace  till  Jamie  Comes  Hame," 

composed  1781. 
Rev.  Thomas  Mitchell,  Lamington,  died  181 1. 


13 


The  Poet  completes  terms  for  the  farm  of  EUisland, 

1788. 
John  Stewart,  Seventh  Earl  of  Galloway,  born  1736. 


14 


R.  H.  Cromek,  died  181 2. 
Gen.  Dumourier,  died  1823. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH.  29 

15 


Janet  Little,  died  1818. 


16 

David  Doig,  Rector  of  Stirling  Grammar  School, 
died  1800. 

Peoples'  Friend  issued  a  Burns  Centenary  Supple- 
ment, 1896. 

Lord  Dare,  (William  Basil)  born  1763. 

Verses  "To  Miss  Isabella  Macleod,"  composed  1787. 


17 

Agnes  Broun,  mother  of  the  poet,  born  1732. 
Dr.  Robert  Chambers,  died  187 1. 


IS 


Charles  K.  Sharpe,  died  1851. 

Article   "The  Reid  Miniature  Portrait   of   Burns," 

appeared  in  The  Scotsman^  1892. 
"Tamo'  Shanter,"   printed  in   Edinburgh  Herald^ 

1791. 


30  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH. 

19 


''Lines   under  the   portrait   of   Fergusson,    written 
1787. 


20 


Copy  of  "  Mary  Morison  "   sent  to  George  Thomson, 
1793. 


21 


**Fair  Empress  of  the  Poets  Soul,"  composed  1788. 


22 


Possilpark  Burns  Club,  instituted  1892. 


22> 


"Burnsiana,"  volume  4,  issued  1894. 


24 


Robert  Aitken,  writer,  Ayr,  died  1807. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH.  31 

— 25 


James   Gould,    great   Collector  of   Burnsiana,    died 
1890.  ' 


26 


Mrs.  Bums,  the  poet's  widow,  died  1834. 


27 


*' Wilt  Thou  Be  My  Dearie  ?"  composed  1793. 


28 


Manuscript  of  **  Song  of  the  Whistle,"  sold  in  Edin- 
burgh at  auction  for  230  guineas,  1887. 


29 


Breadalbane,  John,  4th  Earl  of,  died  1834. 


30 


Dr.  William  McGill,  died  1807. 

**  The  Chevalier's  Lament,"  composed  1788. 


32  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MARCH. 

3 1 


The  Poet  appointed  to  the  Excise,  1788. 

Rev.  Edward  Neilson,  died  1824. 

Cast  taken  of  the  Poet's  cranium,    1834. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— APRIL.  33 


APRIL 
-   1  - 


Funeral  day  of  the  Poet's  widow,  1834. 
First  Epistle  to  Lapraik,  composed  1785. 


Gilbert  Burns  published  his  recollections  of  the  poet, 

1798. 
Dr.  James  Gregory,  died  1821. 


Prof.  John  Wilson,  died  1854. 


4 


Preface  to  second   edition   of    the    poems,    written 

1787. 
Captain  Riddell  of  Glenriddel,  died  1794. 


Tam  'o  Shanter  Club,   Dumfries,    decides   to  raise 
funds  for  a  Burns  Statue,  1877. 


34  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— APRIL. 


6 


Dumfries  Statue  unveiled,  1882. 


*' Yes'treen  I  had  a  pint  of  Wine,"    sent    to     Mr. 
Thomson,  1793. 


8 


Gilbert  Burns,  died  1827. 
William  Paterson,  Kilmarnock,  died  1791. 
James  Sibbald,  bookseller,  died  1803. 
Sir  John  Whitford,  Bart,  died  1803. 


9 


William  Nicol  Burns,  born  1791. 
Common  Place  Book,  commenced  1787. 


10 


Alexander  Nasmyth,  died  1840. 
Rev.  James  Olyphant,  died  18 18. 
Date  of  the  Poet's  Diploma  as  a  member  of  the  Cal- 
edonian Hunt,  1792. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— APRIL.             35 
11  


Jane  Maxwell,  Duchess  of  Gordon,  died  1812. 
Robert  Ainslie,  died  1838. 


12 


Dr.  Currie's  edition  of  the  poet's  works,  issued  1800. 


13 


Robert  Heron,  died  1807. 

Rev.  John  Clunie,  died  181 9. 

Hon.  William  Maule,  (Lord  Panmure)  died  1852. 


14 


Rev.  Dr.  Robert  Duncan,  died  181 5. 
The  Poet  issued  proposals  for  publishing  his  poems, 
1786. 


15 


Rev.  Dr.  A.  Murray,  died  1813. 


16 


Battle  of  Colloden,  1746. 

Mrs.  Dunlop,  of  Dunlop,  born  1730. 


36  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC-APRIL. 


17 


Rev.  Dr.  Patrick  Wodrow,  died  1793. 
Clarinda,  born  1759. 


18 


Rev.  Dr.  John  Kemp,  died  1805. 


19 


Mrs.  M'Murdo,  died  1836. 


20 


*'To  a  Mountain  Daisy,"  composed  1786. 
Earl  of  Buchan,  died  1829. 
John  Murdoch,  schoolmaster,  died  1824. 
Robert  Riddell,  of  Glenriddel,  died  1794. 


21 


New  edition  of  poems,  issued  at  Edinburgh,  1787. 
William  Nicol,  died  1797. 
Second  Epistle  to  Lapraik,  composed  1785. 
The  Ballarat  (Australia)  Statue,  unveiled  1887. 
William  Creech,  publisher,  born  1745. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— APRIL.  37 


22 


Robert  Muir,  wine  merchant,  died  1788. 


23 


William  Wordsworth,  died  1820. 


24 


Jane  Cruickshank,    (Mrs.  James  Henderson)    **The 

Rose-bud/'  died  1835. 
Dr.  James  McKittrick  Adair,  died  1802. 


25 


Maxwell  Burns,  died  1799. 


26 


Rev.  Dr.  David  Shaw,  died  1810. 
The  Poet  promoted  to  Dumfries  First  Division,    Ex- 
cise, 1792. 


27 


"The  Soldier's  Return,"  composed  1793. 


38  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— APRIL. 

28 


Rev.  George  Smith,  died  1823. 

Dr.  William  Greenfield,  died  1827. 

John  Tennant,  ("  Aiild  Glen,")  died  1810. 


29 


Rev.  James  Gillespie,  died  1806. 

Prof.  James  Candlish,  Edinburgh,  born  1806. 


30 


Alexander  Fergusson,  of  Craigdarroch,  died  1796. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MA  Y.  39 


MAY. 
-     1 


James  Hogg,  elected  poet  laureate  of  Canongate 
Kilwinning  Lodge,  No.  2,  1835. 

Lockhart's  **  Life  of  Bums,"  reviewed  by  Prof.  Wil- 
son in  Blackwood's  Magazine,  1828. 

Rev.  Dr.  William  M'Quhae,  born  1737. 


David  Siller,  died  1830. 


Epistle   to   Gavin   Hamilton  recommending  a  boy, 
written  1786. 

4 


John  Anderson,  hero  of  the  song,  *'John  Anderson 
my  Jo,"  died  1832. 


The    Poet    and    Robert    Anislie   started    on    Tour 

through  the  South  of  Scotland,  1787. 
Adelaide  (South  Australia)  Statue  unveiled  1894. 
Rev.  Archibald  Laurie  died  1837. 


40  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MA  Y. 


6 


John  Wilson,  publisher,  died  182 1. 
"  Fair  Maid  you  need  not  take  the  hint,"  composed 
1787. 


John  Lapraik,  died  1807. 
Crawford  Tait,  Harvieston,  died  1832. 
Ode,  "Sacred  to  the  Memory  of  Mrs   Oswald,"  first 
published  in  The  Star,  1789. 


8 


"The   Land  of  Burns,"  by  Hon.    Wallace   Bruce, 
published  in  New  York,  1879. 


9 


Kilmarnock  Sta7idard  reprints  Rev.  P.  H.  Waddell's 
Centenary  (1859)  Address,  1891. 


10 


Dr.  David  Irving,  died  i860. 
Rev.  William  Inglis,  died  1826. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MA  Y.  41 


11 


Freedom    of    Burgh    of  Jedburgh    conferred   upon 

the  Poet,   1787. 
Earl  of  Chatham,  died  1778. 


12 


Captain  Francis  Grose,  died  at  Dublin,  1791. 
Dr.  Alexander  Wood,  Edinburgh,  died  1807, 


13 


William  Tennant,("  Preacher  Willie,")  died  1813, 
Epistle  to  William  Creech,  composed  1787. 


\A 


Final  interview  between   the   Poet   and    Highland 
Mary,  1786. 

Robert  Burns  Jr.,  died  1857. 


15 


"  Epistle  to  a  young  friend,"  composed  1786. 
Highland  Mary  left  Ayrshire  for  the  West  Highlands 
1786. 


41  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MAY. 


16 


Rev.  Dr.  James  Muirhead,  died  1808. 
Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Somerville,  died  1830. 


17 


Rev.  Archibald  Alison,  died  1839. 


18 


Copy   of    "Delia, "sent   to  the  editor  of  The  Star^ 
1789. 


19 


The  poet  was  made  a  Royal  Arch  Mason,  1787, 
Archibald  Skirving,  artist,  died  1819. 


20 


*'  Robert  Burns,  A  Centenry  Ode,"  by  Hunter  Mac- 
Culloch,  issued  1896. 


21 


Burns  Almanac,"  No.  i,  issued  1897. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC-MAY.  43 


22 


Rantin'  Rovin'  Robin,"  composed  1785. 


23> 


The  Poet  acted  as  D.  P.  G.  M.,  St.  James's  Lodge, 
Tarbolton,  1788. 


24 


Mrs.  Dunlop,  of  Dunlop,  died  1815. 
Earl  of  Selkirk  (4th)  died  1799. 

Arent  Schuyler  de  Peyster,  appointed  Colonel  Dum- 
fries Volunteers,  1795. 


25 


Dinner  in  London  in  aid  of  Mausoleum  fund,  1816. 


26 


Jessie  Lewars  (Mrs.  Thomson),  died  1855. 
Francis  Joseph  Hayden,  died  1829. 


27 


Lord  Monboddo,  died  1799. 


44  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MA  Y. 

28 


"Though  Cruel  Fate,"  composed  1785. 


29 


Epitaph  on  Robert  Ruisseaux,  composed  1785. 
William  Marshall,  poet,  died  1833. 


30 


Article  on  Bums  and  Scottish  song,  by  Robert  Ford 
in  The  Peoples'  Frie^id^  1892. 


31 


*'  Mark  Yonder  Pomp  of  Costly  Fashion,"  composed 

1795- 
Sir  Archibald  Alison,  Bart.,  died  1867. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUNE.  45 


JUNE. 
-  1   — 


''Address  of  Beelzebub,'*  composed  1785. 
Mr.  White,  Rector  Dumfries  Academy,  died  1825. 
Drama  entitled  "  Robert  Burns  "  produced   at   The 
Theatre  Royal,  Glasgow,  1896. 


Rev.  John  Mutrie,  died  1785. 


"  Logan  Braes,"  composed  1796. 

Jessie  Lewars  married  to  James  Thomson,  1799. 


4 


"Guid  Mornin'  to  your  Majesty,"  composed  1786. 
Gen.  Burgoyne,  died  1792. 


Miss  Alexander,   "the  Lass  of  Ballochmyle,"  died 

1843. 
Robert  Burns,  architect,  Edinburgh,  died  18 15. 
Rev.  John  Robertson,  Kilmarnock,  died  1799. 


46  THE  BURJSIS  ALMANAC— JUNE. 


A  Burns  Statue  for  Glasgow,  suggested  by  an  article 
in  The  Citizen^  1872. 

Article  "A  French  estimate  of  Burns"  in  Glasgow 
Herald,  1892. 


**  On    a    Scotch    bard   gone   to   the  West   Indies," 
composed  1786. 


8 


**Adown  winding  Nith  I  did  wander, "composed  1793. 


9 


The  Poet  returned  to    Mauchline  after   his  Border 

Tour,  1787. 
Jean  Armour  returned  to  Mauchline  from  Paisley, 

1786. 


10 


**A  Bard's  Epitaph,"  composed  1786. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUNE.                47 
11  


Prof.  Diigald  Stewart,  died  1828. 

Rev.  Dr.  William  Robertson,  died  1793. 


12 


The  Poet  took  tip  his  residence  at  Ellisland,  1788, 
John  Gibson  Lockhart,  born  1794. 


13 


Mrs.  Thompson,  (Betty  Burns,)  died  1873. 


14 


Agnes  Tennant,  ('* Nancy,")  died  1787. 


15 


Thomas  Campbell,  died  1843. 


16 


Rev.  John  Skinner,  died  1807. 


17 


Miss  Eliza  Burnet,  of  Monboddo,  died  1790. 


48  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUNE. 

IS 


"Burnsiana,"  Vol.  VI,  published  1897. 
"Address  To  The  Toothache,"  composed  1789. 


19 


James  Boswell,  of  Auchinleck,  died  1795. 

John  Maxwell,  of  Munches,  died  18 14. 

Patrick  Brydone,  F.  R.  S.,  died  1818. 

John  Kennedy,  Factor,  Dumfries  House,  died  181 2. 


20 


"  From  thee  Eliza,  I  must  go,"  composed  1786. 


21 


Description   of   Tour  in  Galloway,  sent  to  Mr.   D. 

McCuUoch,  1794. 
Samuel  Mitchelson,  died  1788. 


22 


The  Lass  o'  Ballochmyle,"  composed  1786. 
The  Contemporaries  of  Burns,"  published  1840. 


22> 


The  Poet  acted  as  D.  M.  of  St.  James's  Lodge,  1786. 
W.  Scott  Douglas,  died  1883. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUNE.  49 

24 


Alexander,  fourth  Duke  of  Gordon,  died  1827. 
Sir  James  Hall,  of  Douglass,  died  1832. 
Rev.  George  Maxwell,  died  1807. 
William  Smellie,  printer,  died  1795. 


2S 


**Logan  Water," sent  to  Mr. Thomson,  1793. 
St,  James's  Lodge   United  with   St.  David's  Lodge, 
Tarbolton,  1781. 


26 


Jessie  Lewars  presented  by  the  Poet  with  the  Scots 
Musical  Museum,  1796. 


27 


Alexander  H.  Smith, "Antique  Smith,"  convicted  of 
forging  Burns  and  other  manuscripts,  1893. 

Isabella,  sister  of  the  poet,  born  1771. 

David  Ramsay,  (Edinburgh  Courant)^  died  1813. 

Earl  of  Strathallan,  (*' Strathallan's  Lament,")  died 
1765. 


50  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUNE. 

28 


First  Version  of  poem  '*  Written  in  Friars  Carse,' 
composed  1788* 


29 


Mary  Morison,  died  at  Mauchline,  1791. 


30 


William  Roscoe,  died  1831. 

John  Davidson,  '*  Souter  Johnie,"  died  1806. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUL  Y.  51 


JULY. 
-     1    - 


John  Goudie,  AUoway,  died  1842. 

Sir  James  Hunter  Blair,  Bart,  died  1787. 


Article   on    "The   Duchess  of   Gordon,"   by  J.  M. 
Bulloch,  in  The  New  Illustrated  Magazine  1897. 


Jean,  daughter  of  Gilbert  Burns,  died  1815. 


4 


The  Poet  initiated  into  St.  David's  Lodge,  Tarbolton, 

1781. 
Monument  at  Doon,  finished  1823. 
The  Poet  starts  for  Brow,  1796. 
William  Simpson,  schoolmaster,  died  18 15. 
The  Penny  Poets  No.  5,  "Robert  Burns,"  published 

1895. 


52  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUL  Y. 


Mrs.Riddell  and  the  Poet  had  a  memorable  interview, 

1796. 
David  Dunn,  schoolmaster,  died  18 lo. 


*'  Last  May  a  braw  wooer  cam'  down  the  lang  glen," 

composed  1795. 
Poem  entitled  "The  Tomb  of  Bums,"  by  William 

Wallace,  in  The  Spectator^  1895. 
George  Augustus  Elliott,  died  1790. 


Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Blacklock,  died  1791. 
Edmond  Burke,  died  1797. 


s 


Ayr  Monument  unveiled,  1891. 
Fitz-Green  Halleck,  born  1790. 
W.  E.  Henley's  Essay  on  Burns,  written  1897. 


Francis  Wallace  Burns,  Poet's  son,  died  1803. 
Alexander  Marshall,  famous  Mauchline  Burns  Guide, 
died  1898. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUL  Y.  53 


10 


John  Burns,  brother  of  the  Poet,  born  1769. 
Dr.  Robert  Chambers,  bom  1802. 


11 


Epistle  to  Hugh  Parker,  composed  1788. 


12 


Letter  addressed  to  Mr.  Thomson  soliciting  loan  of 

five  pounds,  1796. 
*' Fairest  Maid  on  Devon's  Banks,"  composed  1796. 
Epistle   from  Janet  Little,  addressed   to  the   Poet, 

1789. 
Alexander  Williamson,  Balgray,  died  1805. 
Article   on   Alexander    Nasmyth,    by  the   Rev.    P. 

Anton  in  The  People's  Friend^  1897. 


13 


Leslie   Bailey,  (Mrs.    Cunningham   of   Logic),  died 

1843. 
Lady  Winfred  Maxwell  Constable,  died  1801. 


14 


George  Thompson  wrote  his  last  letter  to  the  Poet, 
1796. 


54  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUL  Y. 


15 


Burns  Exhibition,  opened  at  Glasgow,  1896. 
John  Ballantyne,  banker,  Ayr,  died  181 2. 


16 


Rev.  David  Grant,  died  1791. 


17 


Letter  to   David   Bryce,  "I  am  now  fixed   for   the 

West  Indies  in  October,"  1786. 
Battle  of  Killiecrankie,  1689. 


18 


Statue  at  Irvine  unveiled,  1896. 
The  Poet  returned  from  Brow,  1796. 
Last  letter  written  by  Burns,  (addressed  to  his  father- 
in-law),  1796. 
Lord  President  Dundas,  born  17 13. 


19 

William  Stewart,  companion  of  the  Poet,  died  181 2. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JUL  Y.             i^ 
20 


John  McLeod,  of  Raasay,  died  1787. 


21 


The  day  on  which  the  poet  died,  1796. 

Great  Centenary  Demonstration  held  at  Ayr,  Dun- 
fries,  etc.,  1896.  For  full  accounts  see  Bums 
Chronicle,  Vol.  VI. 

First  Meeting  of  the  Greenock  Burns  Club,  t8oi. 
Bust  of  the  Poet,  by  D.  W.   Stevenson,  unveiled  in 
Tullie  House,  Carlisle,  England,  1898. 


22 

Assignment  made  by  the  Poet  of  his  works,  1786. 
John  Ballantyne,  banker,  Ayr,  born  1743. 


22> 


Inaugural   Meeting  of  the   Dundee   Burns  Society, 

1896. 
Foundation  Stone  of  the  Burns  Memorial,  at  Mauch- 

line,  laid  1896. 


56  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.-JUL  Y. 


24 


The  Poet's  remains  removed  from  his  house  to  the 

Town  Hall,  1796. 
William,  brother  of  the  Poet,  died  1790. 
Article   on    George   Thomson,    in   the    Kilmarnock 

Standard^  1897, 


25 


Funeral  day  of  the  Poet,  1796. 
Maxwell  Burns,  born  1796. 

The   Poet   presided  as  D.   G.   M.,  Tarbolton  Lodge, 
1787. 


26 


Bums   Statue  unveiled   on    Thames   Embankment, 
1884. 


27 


The  Poet  elected  D.  M.  St.  James's  Lodge,  1784. 
Obituary  notice   of   the    Poet   appeared   in   London 
Herald^  1796. 


28 


Mrs.  Dugald  Stewart,  (Miss  Cranston),  died  1838. 
Prof.  John  Stuart  Blackie,  bom  1809. 
The  Poet  promoted  to  Dumfries  3rd.  Division  Excise, 
1790. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— JULY.  57 

29 


Alexander  Weir,  merchant,  died  1819. 


30 


William  Bums,  brother  of  the  Poet,  bom  1767. 


31 


Dr.  James  Currie,  died  1805. 

"Scots   Wha   Hae,"   composed    (according   to   Mr. 
Syme),  1793. 


S8  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— AUGUST. 


AUGUST. 
1     


Rev.  James  Young,  Cumnock,  died  1795. 
Highland  Mary  Statue  at  Dunoon,  unveiled  1896. 


Autobiographical   sketch   sent  to  Dr.   John  Moore, 
i7«7. 


Sir  Harris  Nicolas,  died  1848. 


First  epistle  to   Mr.    Graham,  of   Fintrv,  composed 

1788. 
Lady  Elizabeth  Cunningham,  died  1804. 


The  Poet  and  Jean  Armour  legally  married,  1788. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— AUGUST.  59 


Festival  in  honor  of  the  Poet's  sons  held  at  Ayr,  1844. 

Rev.  Walter  Young,  died  18 14. 

David  Allan,  printer,  died  1796. 

Stephen  Clark,  musician,  died  1797. 

The  Sydney  (Australia)  Memorial  wreath  of  flowers, 

enclosed  in  a   hugh   block   of  ice,  received  in 

Dumfries,  1896. 


*'The  Kirk's  Alarm,"  composed  1789. 


8 


'*  Montgomery's  Peggy,"  composed  1784. 
William  Muir,  wine  merchant,  born  1758. 


**  Whistle  and  I'll  come  to  you,"  composed  1793. 
Kilmarnock  Memorial  Statue,  unveiled  1879. 
Catalogue  of  the  M'Kie  Burnsiana  Library,  published 
1883. 


6o  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— AUGUST. 


lO 


Sir  Robert  Laurie,  Maxwelton,  died  1804. 
Second  epistle' to  Mr.   Graham,  of  Fintry,  composed 
1789. 


11 


Alexander  Tennant,  ("Singin'  Sannock"),  died  1841, 


12 


James  Glencairn  Burns,  bom  1794. 


13 


Fourth  Volume,  Scots  Musical  Museum,  published 
1792. 

George  Gebbie,  Burns  scholar  and  publisher,  Phila- 
delphia, Pa.,  died  1892. 


14 


Rev.  James  Shepard,  Muirkirk,  died  1799. 


15 


Sir  Walter  Scott,  born  1771. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— AUGUST.  6i 


16 


Letter  regardinof  "  Man  was  Made  to  Mourn,"  sent 
to  Mrs.  Dimlop,  1788. 


17 


Dr.  Adam  Smith,  died  1790. 

Article  entitled  "A   Glimpse   of   Clarinda,"  by  Dr. 

James  Adams,  appeared  in  Glasgow  Daily  Mail^ 

1895. 


18 


Francis  Wallace  Burns,  born  1789. 

Dr.  James  Beattie,  died  1803. 

The  Poet  acted  as  D.  M.,  St.  James's  Lodge,  1786. 


19 


Samuel  Clark,  writer,  died  1814. 


20 


The  Poet  visited  Kenmore,  1787. 

Ann  Rankine,  (Mrs.  Merry),  died  18 14. 


6a  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— AUGUST. 


21 


Unveiling  of  the  Highland  Mary  panel  in  the  Ayr 

Statue,  by  the  Hon.  Wallace  Bruce,  1895. 
John,  Earl  of  Mar,  died  1825. 


22 


"The  Holy  Fair,"  composed  1785. 


22> 


William  Simpson,  of  Ochiltree,  born  1758. 
Alexander  Wilson,  author  of  * 'Watty  and  Meg,"  died 

1813. 
"Robert  Aiken,  (writer,  Ayr),  born  1739. 


24 


Rev.   Dr.  Blacklock,  addressed  a  poetical  epistle  to 
the  Poet,  1789. 


25 


The  Poet  started  on  his  Highland  Tour,  1787. 
Andrew  Strahan,  publisher,  died  1831. 


26 


The  Poet  knelt  at  the  tomb  of  Sir  John  the  Graham, 
1787. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— AUGUST.  63 

27 


Gavin  Hamilton's  Mother  and  her  family  visited  by 
the  Poet,  1787. 


28 


John  Francis  Erskine,  Earl  of  Mar,  died  1825. 


29 


'•  On  the  Seas  and  Far  Away,"  composed  1794. 
The  Poet  visited  Taymouth,  1787. 
Rev.  William  Dalrymple,  born  1723. 


30 


David  Tennant,  ("The  Manly  Tar"),  died  1839. 
**Theniel  Menzie's  Bonie  Mary,"  composed  1787. 


31 


Dr.  James  Currie,  died  1805. 


64         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC—SEPTEMBER. 


SEPTEMBER, 
1   


Public  Library  opened  in  Dumfries,  1793. 


Blair  Athol  visited  by  the  Poet,  1787. 
Thomas  Telford,  engineer,  died  1834. 


3 


Robert  Burns  Jr.,  born  1786. 

The  Poet  listens  to  sermon  by  the  Rev.  J  as.  Stevens, 
(The  Calf),  1786. 


Rev.   Dr.    Blacklock   suggested   that   the  Poet  visit 

Edinburgh,  1786. 
The  Burns   Federation  decided  to  issue  an  Annual 

*'  Bums  Chronicle,"  1891. 


Robert  Fergusson,  born  175 1. 

The  Poet  visited  the  Falls  of  Foyers,  1787. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— SEPTEMBER.         65 


6 


James  Clark,  teacher,  died  1825. 
Bolton  Burns  Club,  instituted  1881. 


Colloden  Muir,  visited  by  the  Poet,    1787. 


8 


The  Poet  enrolled  as  a  member  of  the  Caledonian 

Archers,  1792. 
Sir  S.  Brydges  Egerton,  died  1837. 


**The  Day  Returns,"  composed  1788. 


10 


*'Tam  Samson's  Elegy",  composed  1786. 
Mary  Wolstonecraft,  died  1797. 


11 


Jean  Lorimer,  *'Chloris,"  died  1831. 
Colin  Rae  Brown,  died  1897. 


66         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— SEPTEMBER. 


12 


The  Poet's  remains  placed  in  the  Mausoleum,  1815. 
William  Tytler,  of  Woodhouselee,  died  1792. 


13 


Third  epistle  to  Lapraik,  composed  1785. 
Lord  Maitland,  died  1839. 
Charles  James  Fox,  died  1806. 


14 


Rev.  Dr.  Andrew  vShaw,  died  1805. 

Foundation  Stone  of  the  Kilmarnock  Memorial,  laid 

1878. 
Crossgates  Burns  Club,  instituted  1889. 


15 


Burns  Statue  unveiled  at  Aberdeen,  1892. 
Mrs.    M.    Henri,  (daughter  of   Mrs.   Dunlop),  died 
1792. 


16 


The  Poet  returned  to  Edinburgh  from  his  Highland 
tour,  1787. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— SEPTEMBER.         67 

17 


Epistle  to  the  Rev.  John  McMath,  written  1785. 
Mrs.  Ronald,  Bennals,  died  1838. 


IS 


Monument  erected  in  St.  Michael's  Churchyard,  1815. 


19 


Douglas  Ainslie,  died  1850. 


20 


*'  The  Burns  Scrap  Book,"  issued  in  New  York,  1893 


21 


Sir  Walter  Scott,  died  1832. 


22 


**She  says  she  lo'es  me  best  of  a',''  composed  1794. 


22> 


Sir  Adam  Ferguson,  of  Kilkerran,  died  18 13. 


68         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— SEPTEMBER. 


24 


*'0  Willie  brewed  a  peck  o'maut,"  composed  1789. 
John,  seventh  Earl  of  Glencairn,  died  1796. 


25 

Rev.  James  Grey,  died  1830. 


26 

James  McKie,  publisher,  died  1891, 
The  Paisley  Statue  unveiled,  1896. 


27 


Sir  Thomas  Miller,  Bart.,  died  1789. 


28 


Gilbert  Bums,  born  1760. 


29 


John,  fourth  Duke  of  Athol,  died  1830. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC—SEPTEMBER.         69 
30 


Burns  Statue  at  Albany,  (N.Y.),  unveiled  1888. 

Agnes  Bums,  bom  1762. 

The  Poet  presented  four  volumes  to  the  Subscription 

Library,  Dumfries,  1793. 
Mrs.  Findley,  (Miss  Markland),  died  185 1. 


70  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— OCTOBER. 

OCTOBER. 

• 1    


The  Poet  raised  to  the  Sublime  Degree  of  Master 

Mason,  1781. 
Charles  Tennant,   ("Wabster  Charlie"),  died   1838. 


Burns  Statue  unveiled  in  Central  Park,  New  York, 
1880. 


Edward  Whigham,  (Provost  of  Sanquhar),  died  1823. 


Ballad  of  the  Whistle,  composed  1789. 

Mr.    McWhinnie,  writer,    Ayr,    and   subscriber  for 

twenty  copies  of  the  Kilmarnock  edition,  died 

1819. 


Date  of  second  epistle  to  Mr.  Graham,  of  Fintry, 
1791. 

**  Bums' Clarinda,"  edited  by  John  D.  Ross,  pub- 
lished at  Edinburgh,  1897. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— OCTOBER.  71 

6  


Final  accounting  between  the  Poet  and  Mr.  Wilson, 
printer,  1786. 


"Farewell  the  Bonnie  Banks  of  Ayr, "  composed  1786. 


s 


Hon.  Henry  Erskine,  died  181 7. 


James  Brash,  bookseller,  died  1835. 

Sir  Alexander  Boswell,  Bart.,  bom  1775. 


10 


Allan  Masterton  appointed  writing  master  to  Edin- 
burgh High  School,  1789. 


11 


Rev.  Dr.  William  Peebles,  died  1826. 
Burns  Monument  unveiled  at  Leith,  1898. 


72  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— OCTOBER. 

12 


William  Tytler,  of  Woodhoiiselee,  born  1781, 


13 


Dr.  William  Maxwell,  died  1834. 
William  Motherwell,  born  1797. 


14 


Rev.  Dr.  Andrew  Mitchell,  died  181 1. 
Rev.  Mr.  Lawson,  Kirkmahoe,  died  1796. 


15 


Allan  Ramsay,  born  1686. 

Dr.  James  Anderson,  of  The  Bee,  died  1808. 


16 


Robert  Fergusson,  died  1774. 

Dundee  Statue  unveiled,  1880. 

Final  contest  for  the  Whistle  occured  at  Friars  Carse, 

1789. 
Mrs.    Perochen,    (daughter   of   Mrs.    Dunlop),    died 

1825. 
The  Poet  elected  an  honorary  member  of  St.  John's 

Lodge,  Kilmarnock,  1786. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— OCTOBER.  73 

17 


Isa  Craig-  Knox,  born  1831. 

Rev.  William  Boyd,  of  Fen  wick,  died  1828. 


18 


Letter  to  Miss  Alexander,  of  Balloclimyle,  1786. 


19 


"  The  Lover's  Morning  Salutation,''  composed  1794. 
Charles  Hay,  (Lord  Newton),  died  t8ii. 
Rev.  Dr.  Laurie,  died  1799. 
Rev.  Dr.  Candlish,  died  1873. 


20 


Highland  Mary,  died  1786. 

"To  Mary  in  Heaven,"  composed  1789. 

The  Poet  returned  to  Edinburgh,  1787. 


21 


**On    Captain    Grose's    Peregrinations,"   composed 

1789. 
Epistle  to  Dr.  Blacklock,  composed  1789. 
David  Staig,  Provost  of  Dumfries,  died  1826. 


74  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— OCTOBER. 

^ 22 


Clarinda,  died  1841. 

Grace  Aitken,  died  1857. 

Sir  James  Shaw,  Bart.,  died  1843. 

David  Watt,  miller,  died  1823. 


22> 


The  Poet  introduced  to  Prof.  Dugald  Stewart,  1786. 


24 


"  Lines  on  Meeting  with  Lord  Dare,"  composed  1786. 


25 


"  TuUochgorum, "  pronounced  "the  best  Scotch  song 

ever  Scotland  saw,"  1787. 
Cupar  Bums  Club,  inaugurated  1893. 


26 


The  Poet  affiliated  with  St.  John's  Lodge,  1786. 


27 


The    Poet    presented    with    Ritson's    collection    of 

English  songs,  1794. 
Baron  Panmure,  born  1771. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC-OCTOBER.  75 

28 


William  Dudg-eon,  died  1813. 


-29- 

Allan  Cunningham,  died  1842. 


30 


Andrew  Hunter  Aiken,  died  1832. 

"  Epistle  to  Major  Logan,"  composed  1786. 

Archibald,  eleventh  Earl  of  Eglinton,  died  1796, 


31 


London  Burns  Club,  instituted  1868. 

Hallowe'en. 

John  Niven,  died  1822. 

Jean  Glover,  born  1758. 


76  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— NOVEMBER. 


NOVEMBER. 

—  1  — 


William  Motherwell,  died  1835. 

St.  Rollox  Burns  Club,  instituted  1889. 


Isabel  Pagan,  died  1821. 

The  Tarn  o'  Shanter  Inn,  Ayr,  sold  at  public  auction 
foi*;£"3i9o,  1892. 


Edinburgh  Magazine  contained  critique  on  the  Poet's 

writing's,  1786. 
Rev.  William  M'Morine,  died  1832. 
Margaret  Kennedy,  ("Young  Peggy"),  born  1766. 


Mrs.  Bruce,  (Clackmannan),  died  1791. 
Impromptu  sonnet  on  Mrs.   Riddel's  birthday,    com- 
posed 1793. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— NOVEMBER.  77 


**  My  Chloris,  mark  how  green  the  groves,"  com- 
posed 1794. 


Robert  Heron,  born  1764. 
Bumsiana,  Vol,  V,  issued  1895. 


Lassie  wi'  the  Lint  White  Locks,"  composed  1794, 


The  Poet  defends  the  house  of  Stuart  in  a  letter  to 
The  London  Star^  1788. 


"To  a  Mouse,"  composed  1785. 


10 


Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Blacklock,  born  1721. 
Sir  Gay  Carleton,  (Lord  Dorchester),  died  1808. 
James  McPherson,("McPherson's  Fare  well"),  hanged 
at  Banff,  1700. 


78  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— NOVEMBER. 


11 


William  Burnes,  the  Poet's  father,  born  1721. 

Lease  of  Ellisland  surrendered,  1791. 

First  meeting  of  the   Bachelor's   Club,    Tarbolton, 
1780. 


12 


Sir  William  Forbes,  Bart.,  died  1806. 


13 


Battle  of  Sherrifmuir,  17 15. 

John  Stewart,  seventh  Earl  of  Galloway,  died  1806. 


14 


Anabella  Bums,  sister  of  the  poet,  born  1764. 

Miss  Susan  Ferrier,  died  1844. 

Duchess  of  Albany,  died  1789. 

Sir  Roger  Curtis,  Admiral,  died  18 16. 


15 

*'  Burns'  Bonnie  Jean,"  edited  by  John  D.  Ross,  pub- 
lished in  New  York,  1897. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— NOVEMBER.  79 


16 


Dr.   James   Adair  and    Miss    Charlotte    Hamilton, 
married  1789. 


17 


Fitz-Green  Halleck,  died  1867. 


IS 


James  Glencairn  Burns,  died  1865. 

Song-    "The    Lass   of   Ballochmyle, "    sent   to    Miss 

Alexander,  1786. 
John  M'Diarmed,  Dumfries,  died  1852. 


19 


James  Fergusson,  (Craigdarroch),  died  1787. 
"  O  Phillis,  happy  be  that  day,"  composed  1794. 


20 


*'  Contented  wi'  little  and  can  tie  wi'  mair,"  composed 

1795. 
Gavin  Hamilton,  baptised  1751. 


21 


Elizabeth  Riddell  Burns,  bom  1792. 
James  Hogg,  died  1835. 


8o  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— NOVEMBER. 


22 

New  Brig,  Ayr,  opened  1786. 


22> 


Burns  manuscript  forgeries  exposed  by  Edinburgh 
Evening  Dispatch^  1892. 


24 


John  Syme,  died  1831, 

Robert  Burns  Club,  of  Chester,  Pa.,  organized  1879. 


25 


John  Gibson  Lockhart,  died  1854. 


26 


Col.  De  Peyster,  died  1822. 


27 


The  Poet  left  Mossgiel  for  Edinburgh,  1786. 
Capt.  Matthew  Henderson,  died  1788. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— NOVEMBER.  8i 


28 


William  Wallace,  sheriff,  died  1786. 
The  Poet  arrived  in  Edinburgh,  1786. 


29 


William  Read,  bookseller,  died  1831. 


30 


**  Robert  Burns;  an  anniversary  poem, "  by   Duncan 
MacGregor  Crerar,  published  1885. 


"  My  Bonie  Mary,"  composed  17: 


'Address  to  Edinburgh,"  composed  1786. 


**Isobel  Burns,  (Mrs.  Begg),  died  1858. 
Thomas  Carlyle,  bom  1795. 

Alexander  Findlater,  excise  collector,  died  1839. 
John  M'Murdo,  died  1803. 


Duchess  of  Athole,  died  1790. ' 
James  Perry,  editor,  died  1821. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— DECEMBER.  83 


Final  interview  between  the  Poet  and  Clarinda, 
1791. 

First  letter  to  Clarinda,  written  1787. 

Song,  "  Once  mair  I  hail  thee,  thou  gloomy  Decem- 
ber," composed  1792. 

Mrs.  Oswald,  of  Auchencriuve,  died  1788. 


Allan  Cunningham,  born  1784. 

The  Poet  introduced  to  the  brethern  of  Canongate 
Kilwinning  Lodge,  1786. 


s 


Elizabeth  Burns,  "  Sonsie,  vSmirking,  dear-bought 
Bess,"  (Mrs.  John  Bishop),  died  181 7. 

Accident  to  the  Poet  which  confined  him  to  his  room 
for  six  weeks,  1787. 

Prof.  Andrew  Dalzell,  died  1806. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  born  1542. 


Henry  Mackenzie's  article  on  the  Poet  appeared  in 

The  Lounger^  1786. 
Patrick  Miller,  of  Dalswinton,  died  18 15. 


84  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— DECEMBER. 

lO 


Philadelphia,  Pa.  Burns  Statue  Association,  insti- 
tuted 1893. 

Article,  '*The  Prose  of  Burns"  appeared  in  The 
Scotsman^  1887. 


11 


Copy  of  ''  Lament  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,"  sent  to 
Clarinda,  1791. 


12 


Rev.  Dr.  William  Auld,  died  1791. 
Thomas  Samson,  died  1795. 


13 


Lord  President  Dundas,  died  1787. 

John  Beugo,  engraver,  died  1841. 

William  Niven,  Maybole,  died  1844. 

Glasgow  Sandyford  Burns  Club,  instituted  1893. 


14 


Rev.  Mr.  Lawson,  Kirkmahoe,  died  1796. 
William  Wood,  actor,  died  1802. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— DECEMBER.  85 

15 


William  Bumes  and  Agnes  Broun,  married  1757. 
Earl  of  Eglinton,  (Montgomerie  of  Coilsfield),  died 
1819. 

Philadelphia  Tam  o'  Shanter  Club,  instituted  1883. 
Mrs.  Walter  Riddell,  died  1808. 


16 


The  Poet  praised  his  Jacobite  Ancestry  in  a  letter  to 
Lady  Winfield  M.  Constable,  1789. 


17 


Epigram  "To  Mr.  vSyme,"  composed  1795. 
•'Song  of  Death,"  composed  1791. 


18 


Carlyle's  Review  of  Lockhart's   Bums  appeared  in 

The  Edinburgh  Review^  1828. 
Rev.  John  M'Math,  died  1825. 


19 


Louis  Cauvin,  French  Teacher,  died  1825. 


86  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— DECEMBER. 


20 


"Address  to  the    Haggis,"  first  published   in  Cale- 
donian  Mercury^  1786. 


21 


Sir  John  Sinclair,  died  1835. 

Mrs.  Margaret  M.  Inglis,  Dumfries,  died  1843. 


22 


Rev.  Alexander  Miller,  died  1804. 
Nanse  Tannock,  died  1858. 


23 


Helen  Marie  Williams,  died  1827. 

William,  fourth  Duke  of  Queensberry,  died  18 10. 


24 


Gilbert,  son  of  Gilbert  Burns,  died  1803. 


25 


The  Burns  Almanac,  No.  2,  published  1897. 
George  Augustus  Eliot,  born  17 17. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— DECEMBER.  87 

26 


Manson's  Bums,  2  vols.,  published  in  London,  1895. 


27 


The  Poet  elected  a  member  of  St.  Andrew's  Lodge, 

Dumfries,  1788. 
Copy  of  "Ae  fond  Kiss,"  sent  to  Clarinda,  1791. 
Dr.  Hugh  Blair,  died  1800. 
Thomas  Cadell,  publisher,  died  1 800. 


— 28 

The   Poet  wrote  his  first  letter  to  his  father  from 
Irvine,  1781. 


29 


'Carlyle  on  Bums"  by  John  Muir,  published  1897. 


30 


The   Poet  first  alludes   to   Clarinda  in   a  letter  to 
Richard  Brown,  1787. 


88  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— DECEMBER. 


31 


The  Poet  recited  his  Birthday  Ode  in  honor  of  Prince 

Charlie,  1787. 
Gen.  Richard  Montgomerie,  died  1775. 
Lenzie  Burns  Club,  instituted  1895. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  89 


ROBERT  BURNS'  FAMILY. 

Robert  Burns,  born  25th  of  January,  1759.  Died 
at  Dumfries,  21st  of  July,  1796. 

Jean  Armour,  his  wife,  born  at  Mauchline,  27th  of 
February,  1765.  Died  at  Dumfries,  26th  of  March, 
1834. 


children: 

Twins — boy  and  girl — born  3d  of  September,  1786. 
Robert  died  14th  day  of  May,  1857.  The  girl  died 
in  infancy. 

Twins,  born  3rd  of  March,  1788.  Both  died  soon 
after  birth. 

Francis  Wallace,  born  i8th  of  August,  1789.  Died 
9th  of  July,  1803. 

William  Nicol,  bom  9th  of  April,  1791.  Died  21st 
February,  1872. 

Elizabeth  Riddel,  born  21st  of  November,  1792. 
Died  September,  1795. 

James  Glencairn,  born  12th  of  August,  1794. 
Died  1 8th  of  November,  1865. 

Maxwell,  born  25th  of  July,  1796.  Died  25th  of 
April,  1799. 

WILLIAM  BURNES'  FAMILY. 

William  Burnes,  bom  at  Clockenhill,  nth  of  Nov- 
ember, 1 721.     Died  13th  of  February,  1784. 

Agnes  Broun,  his  wife,  born  in  Carrick  district, 
17th  of  March,   1732.     Died  14th  of  January.  1820. 


90 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 


children: 

Robert,   born  25th  of  January,    1759.     Died    21st 
of  July,  1796. 

Gilbert,  born  28th  of  September,  1760.     Died  8th 
of  April,  1827. 

Ag-nes,  born  30th  of  September,    1762.     Died  8th 
of  April,  1834. 

Annabella,  born  14th  of  November,    1764.     Died 
2d  of  March,  1832. 

William,  born  30th  of  Juty,    1767.     Died    24th   of 
July,  1790. 

John,  born  loth  of  July,  1769.     Died  24th  of  July, 
1783. 

Isobel,    born    27th    of  June,    1771.     Died   4th   of 
December,  1858. 


PRICES  OBTAINABLE  IN  1898  FOR  A  FIRST 
EDITION  OF  BURNvS. 

Copies  measuring  7      inches /^-^o 


1% 

7>^ 

7^ 

8 

8>^ 

8X 
8^ 
8>^ 
8f^ 
8^ 
8^ 
9 


45 
60 

75 

90 

100 

no 

122 

135 
147 
160 

175 
190 


If  in  the  original  boards,  and  with  the  label  on 

back  200 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  91 

LIST    OF    SUBSCRIBERS    FOR    THE    FIRST 
EDITION. 

Copies 

Robert  Aitken,  of  Ayr 145 

Robert  Muir,  Kilmarnock 72 

Gilbert  Burns,  Mossii^iel 70 

James  Smith,  Maucliline 41 

Gavin  Hamilton,  Mauchline 40 

John  Logan,    Laight 20 

John  Kennedy,   Dumfries  House 20 

Mr.  M'Whinnie,  Ayr 20 

David  Sillar,  Irvine 14 

Wm.  Niven,  Maybole 7 

Walter  Morton,  Cumnock 6 

John  Neilson,  Cumnock 5 

The  Author 3 

The  Printer 70 

Sundry  persons 67 

Total 600 


SEVEN  EPOCHS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  BURNS. 

First  Epoch — Alloway. 
Seven  years  were  passed  in  the  Auld  Clay  Biggin 
at  Alloway,  from  the  25th  of   January,    1759,    until 
the  Whitsuntide  of  1766. 

Second  Epoch — Mount  Oliphant. 
Eleven  years  (from  his  seventh  to  his  eighteenth 
year)  were  passed  on  the  farm  at  Mount  Oliphant, 
from  the  Whitsuntide  of  1766  imtil  the  Whitsuntide 
of  1777. 

Third  Epoch — Lochlea. 
Six   years   (from   his   eighteenth   to   his   twenty- 
fourth  year)  were  passed  on  the  farm  at  Lochlea, 
from  the  Whitsuntide  of  1777   until  the   Martinmas 
of  1783. 


92  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

Fourth  Epoch — Mossgiel. 

Three  years  (from  his  twenty-fourth  to  his  twenty- 
seventh  year)  were  passed  on  Mossgiel,  from  the 
Martinmas  of  1783  until  the  Martinmas  of  1786. 

Fifth  Epoch — Edinburgh. 

Nearly  two  years  (from  his  twenty-eighth  on  into 
his  twenty-ninth  year)  were  passed  in  Edinburgh,  or 
in  tours  to  the  South,  and  into  the  West  Highlands. 

Sixth  Epoch — Ellisland. 

Three  years  (from  his  twenty-ninth  to  his  thirty- 
second  year,)  from  the  Whitsuntide  of  1788,  until 
nearly  the  end  of  1791,  were  passed  at  the  farm  of 
Ellisland. 

Seventh  Epoch — Dumfries. 

Five  years,  from  the  end  of  1791,  until  the  21st 
of  July,  1796,  when  he  died  (at  the  age  of  thirty- 
seven  years  and  six  months,)  were  passed  in  the 
town  of  Dumfries,  first  in  the  Wee  Vennel,  now 
known  as  Bank  Street,  and  finally  in  a  narrow  street 
near  the  church,  now  called  Burns  Street,  in  mem- 
ory of  its  having  been  the  last  place  of  residence  of 
the  National  Poet  of  Scotland. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  93 

CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE 

OF 

BURNS'    LIFE    AND    WORKS. 

From  the  Globe  edition  of  Burns, 
ALLOWAY. 

1759- 

January  25. — Robert  Burns  born  at  Alloway, 
parish  of  Ayr,  in  a  clay-built  cottage,  the  work  of 
his  father's  own  hands.  His  father, William  Burnes 
(so  the  family  name  was  always  written  until  changed 
by  the  poet),  was  a  native  of  Kincardinshire,  born 
November  11,  1721.  His  mother,  Agnes  Broun, 
born  March  17,  1732,  was  daughter  of  a  farmer  in 
Carrick,  Ayrshire.  The  poet's  parents  were  married 
December  15,  1757.  William  Burnes  was  then  a 
gardner  and  farm-overseer. 

1765 — (^TAT  Six). 

Sent  to  a  school  at.  Alloway  Mill,  kept  by  one 
Campbell,  who  was  succeeded  in  May  by  John 
Murdoch,  a  young  teacher  of  uncommon  merit, 
engaged  by  William  Burnes  and  four  of  his 
neighbors,  who  boarded  him  alternately  at  their 
houses,  and  guaranteed  him  a  small  salary.  Two 
advantages  were  thus  possessed  by  the  poet — an 
excellent  father  and  an  excellent  teacher. 

MOUNT    OLIPHANT. 

1766 — (Seven). 

William  Burnes  removed  to  the  farm  of  Mount 
Oliphant,  two  miles  distant.     His  sons  still  attended 


94  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

Alloway  school.  The  books  used  were  a  spell- 
ing-book^ the  New  Testament^  the  Bible ^  Mason's  Col- 
lection of  Prose  and  Verse^  and  Fisher's  English 
Grammar. 

1768— (Nine). 

Murdoch  gave  up  Alloway  school.  Visiting-  the 
Burnes  family  before  his  departure,  he  took  with 
him,  as  a  present,  the  play  of  Titus  Andronictis. 
He  read  part  of  the  play  aloud,  but  the  horrors  of 
the  scene  shocked  and  distressed  the  children,  and 
Robert  threatened  to  bum  the  book  if  it  was  left. 
Instead  of  it,  Murdoch  gave  them  a  comedy,  the 
School  for  Love  (translated  from  the  French)  and  an 
English  Grammar.  He  had  previously  lent  Robert 
a  Life  of  Hannibal.  "The  earliest  composition  that 
I  recollect  taking  any  pleasure  in,"  says  the  poet, 
"was  the  Vision  of  Mirza,  and  a  hymn  of  Addison's 
beginning.  How  are  Thy  Servants  blest ^  O  Lord  I 
I  particularly  remember  one  half-stanza,  which  was 
music  to  my  boyish  ear, — 

'  For  though  in  dreadful  whirls  we  hung 
High  on  the  broken  wave! '  " 

He  had  found  these  in  Mason's  Collection.  The 
latent  seeds  of  poetry  were  further  cultivated  in  his 
mind  by  an  old  woman  living  in  the  family,  Betty 
Davidson,  who  had  a  great  store  of  tales,  songs, 
ghost-stories,  and  legendary  lore. 

1770 — (Eleven). 

By  the  time  he  was  ten  or  eleven  years  of  age  he 
was  an  excellent  English  scholar,  "a  critic  in  sub- 
stantives, verbs,  and  particles. "  After  the  departure 
of  Murdoch,  William  Burnes  was  the  only  instructor 
of  his  sons  and  other  children.  He  taught  them 
arithmetic,  and  procured  for  their  use  Salmon's 
Geographical  Grammar^  Der ham's  Physics  and  Astro- 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  95 

Theology,  and  Rafs  Wisdom  of  God  in  the  Creation. 
These  gave  the  boys  some  idea  of  Geography, 
Astronomy  and  Natural  History.  He  had  also 
Stackhouse's  History  of  the  Bible,  Taylor's  Scripture 
Doctrine  of  Original  Sin,  a  volume  of  English  His- 
tory (reigns  of  James  I.  and  Charles  I.).  The 
blacksmith  lent  the  common  metrical  Life  of  Sir 
William  Wallace  (which  was  read  with  Scottish  fervor 
and  enthusiasm),  and  a  maternal  uncle  supplied  a 
Collection  of  Letters  by  the  wits  of  Queen  Anne's 
reign,  which  inspired  Robert  with  a  strong  desire  to 
excel  in  letter- writing. 

1772 — (Thirteen). 

To  improve  their  penmanship,  William  Bumes 
sent  his  sons,  week  about,  during  the  summer 
quarter,  to  the  parish  school  of  Dalrymple,  two 
or  three  miles  distant.  This  year  Murdoch  was 
appointed  teacher  of  English  in  Ayr  school,  and  he 
renewed  his  acquaintance  with  the  Burnes  family, 
sending  them  Pope's  Works  and  ' '  some  other  poetry. " 

1773 — (Fourteen). 

Robert  boarded  three  weeks  with  Murdoch  at 
Ayr  in  order  to  revise  his  English  Grammar,  He 
acquired  also  a  smattering  of  French,  and  on 
returning  home  he  took  with  him  a  French  Dictionary 
and  French  Grammar,  and  a  copy  of  Telemaque, 
He  attempted  Latin,  but  soon  abandoned  it. 

1774 — Fifteen). 

His  knowledge  of  French  introduced  him  to  some 
respectable  families  in  Ayr  (Dr.  Malcomb's  and 
others).  A  lady  left  him  the  Spectator,  Pope's 
Homer,  and  several  other  books.  In  this  year  began 
with   him    love   and    poetry.     His  partner  in   the 


96  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

harvest-field  was  a  "bewitching  creature"  a  year 
younger  than  himself,  Nelly  Kilpatrick,  daughter  of 
the  blacksmith,  who  sang  sweetly,  and  on  her  he 
afterwards  wrote  his  first  song  and  first  effort  at 
rhyme,  O,  once  I  loved  a  bonnie  lass. 

1775 — (Sixteen). 

About  this  time  Robert  was  the  principal  laborer 
on  the  farm.  From  the  unproductiveness  of  the 
soil,  the  loss  of  cattle,  and  other  causes,  William 
Burnes  had  got  into  pecuniary  difficulties,  and  the 
threatening  letters  of  the  factor  (the  landlord  being 
dead)  used  to  set  the  distressed  family  in  tears. 
The  charater  of  the  factor  is  drawn  in  the  Tale  of 
Twa  Dogs.  The  hard  labor,  poor  living,  and  sorrow 
of  this  period  formed  the  chief  cause  of  the  poet's 
subsequent  fits  of  melancholy,  frequent  headaches, 
and  palpitation  of  the  heart. 

1776 — (Seventeen). 

Spent  his  seventeenth  summer  (so  in  poet's  ]\IS. 
British  Museum;  Dr.  Currie  altered  the  date  to 
nineteenth)  on  a  smuggling  coast  in  Ayrshire,  at 
Kirkoswald,  on  purpose  to  learn  mensuration,  sur- 
veying, etc.  He  made  good  progress,  though  mixing 
somewhat  in  the  dissipation  of  the  place,  which  had 
then  a  flourishing  contraband  trade.  Met  the 
second  of  his  poetical  heroines,  Peggy  Thomson,  on 
whom  he  afterwards  wrote  his  fine  song,  Now  zvestlin 
winds  arid  s laugh f ring  guns.  The  charms  of  this 
maiden  "overset  his  trigonometry  and  set  him  off 
at  a  tangent  from  the  sphere  of  his  studies."  On  his 
return  from  Kirkoswald  ("in  my  seventeenth  year," 
he  writes)  he  attended  a  dancing  school  to  "give  his 
manners  a  brush."  His  father  had  an  antipathy  to 
these  meetings,  and  his  going  "in  absolute  defiance 
of    his    father's   command"    (sic  in   orig. )   was   an 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  97 

"  instance  of  rebellion  "  which  he  conceived  brought 
on  him  the  paternal  resentment  and  even  dislike. 
Gilbert  Bums  dissents  altogether  from  this  con- 
clusion: the  poet's  extreme  sensibility  and  regret 
for  his  one  act  of  disobedience  led  him  unconsciously 
to  exaggerate  the  circumstances  of  the  case.  At 
Kirkoswald  he  had  enlarged  his  reading  by  the 
addition  of  Thomson's  and  Shenstone's  Works ^  and 
among  the  other  books  to  which  he  had  access  at 
this  period,  besides  those  mentioned  above,  were 
some  plays  of  Shakespeare,  Allan  Ramsafs  Works ^ 
Harvefs  Meditations,  and  a  Select  Collection  of 
English  Songs  (*'The  Lark,"  2  vols.).  This  last 
work  was,  he  says,  his  vade  mecum;  he  pored  over  it 
driving  his  cart  or  walking  to  labor,  and  carefully 
noted  the  true  tender  or  sublime  from  affectation 
and  fustian.  He  composed  this  year  two  stanzas, 
/  dream' d  I  lay  where  flowers  were  springing. 

LOCHLEA. 

1777 — (Eighteen). 

William  Bumes  and  family  remove  to  a  larger 
farm  at  Lochlea,  parish  of  Tarbolton.  Take  possess- 
ion at  Whitsunday.  Affairs  for  a  time  look  brighter, 
and  all  work  diligently.  Robert  and  Gilbert  have 
^£■7  per  annum  each  as  wages  from  their  father,  and 
they  also  take  land  from  him  for  the  purpose  of 
raising  flax  on  their  own  account.  '  *  Though,  when 
young,  the  poet  was  bashful  and  awkward  in  his 
intercourse  with  women,  as  he  approached  manhood 
his  attachment  to  their  society  became  very  strong, 
and  he  was  constantly  the  victim  of  some  fair 
enslaver."  (Gilbert  Burns.)  He  was  in  the  secret, 
he  says,  of  half  the  loves  of  the  parish  of  Tarbolton. 

1778 — Nineteen). 

**I  was,"  he  says,  ** about  eighteen  or  nineteen 
when   I  sketched  the  outlines  of  a  tragedy."     The 


98  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

whole  had  escaped  his  memory,  except  a  fragment 
of  twenty  lines:  All  devil  as  I  am,  etc. 

1780 — (Twenty-one). 

The  "Bachelors'  Club,"  established  at  Tarbolton 
by  Robert  and  Gilbert  Burns,  and  five  other  young 
men.  Meetings  were  held  once  a  month,  and  ques- 
tions debated.  The  sum  expended  by  each  member 
was  not  to  exceed  threepence. 

1781 — (Twenty-two). 

David  Sillar  admitted  a  member  of  the  Bachelors' 
Club.  He  describes  Burns:  "I  recollect  hearing 
his  neighbors  observe  he  had  a  great  deal  to  say  for 
himself,  and  that  they  suspected  his  prinhiples  (his 
religious  principles).  He  wore  the  only  tied  hair  in 
the  parish,  and  in  the  church  his  plaid,  which  was 
of  a  particular  color,  I  think  fillemot,  he  wrapped  in  a 
particular  manner  round  his  shoulders.  Between 
sermons  we  often  took  a  walk  in  the  fields ;  in  these 
walks  I  have  frequently  been  struck  by  his  facility 
in  addressing  the  fair  sex,  and  it  was  generally  a 
death-blow  to  our  conversation,  however  agreeable, 
to  meet  a  female  acquaintance.  Some  book  he 
always  carried  and  read  when  not  otherwise  em- 
ployed. It  was  likewise  his  custom  to  read  at  table. 
In  one  of  my  visits  to  Lochlea,  in  the  time  of  a 
sowen  supper,  he  was  so  intent  on  reading, — I  think 
Tristram  Sha7idy^ — that  his  spoon  falling  out  of  his 
hand  made  him  exclaim  in  a  tone  scarely  imitable, 
'Alas,  poor  Yorick! '  "  The  poet  had  now  added  to 
his  collection  of  books  Mackenzie's  Man  of  Feeling 
(which  he  said  he  prized  next  to  the  Bible)  and  Man 
of  the  World,  Sterne's  Works,  and  Macpherson's 
Ossian.  He  would  appear  also  to  have  had  the 
poetical  works  of  Young.  Among  the  fair  ones 
whose  society    he   courted    was   a  superior  young 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  99 

woman,  bearing  the  unpoetical  name  of  Ellison 
Begbie.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  small  farmer  at 
Galston,  but  was  servant  with  a  family  on  the  banks 
of  the  Cessnock.  On  her  he  wrote  a  ''song  of 
similes,"  beginning  On  Cessnock  banks  there  lives  a 
lass,  and  the  earliest  of  his  printed  correspondence 
is  addressed  to  Ellison.  His  letters  are  grave, 
sensible  epistles,  written  with  remarkable  purity  and 
correctness  of  language.  At  this  time  poesy  was, 
he  says,  "a  darling  walk  for  his  mind."  The  oldest 
of  his  printed  pieces  were  Winter^  a  Dirge,  the  Death 
of  Poor  Mailie,  John  Barleycorn,  and  the  three  songs 
//  was  upon  a  Laimnas  night.  Now  westlin  winds  and 
slaughtering  guns,  and  Behind  yon  hills  zvhere  Sttnchar 
flows.  We  may  add  to  these  O  Tibbie  I  hae  seen 
the  day  and  My  father  was  a  farmer.  His  exquisite 
lyric,  O  Mary,  at  thy  window  be,  was  also,  he  says, 
one  of  his  juvenile  works. 

1782 — (Twenty-three). 

Ellison  Begbie  refuses  his  hand.  She  was  about 
to  leave  her  situation,  and  he  expected  himself  to 
"remove  a  little  further  off."  He  went  to  the  town 
of  Irvine.  *'  My  twenty- third  year,"  he  says,  "was 
to  me  an  important  era.  Partly  through  whim,  and 
partly  that  I  wished  to  set  about  doing  something  in 
life,  I  joined  a  flax-dresser  in  a  neighboring  town  to 
learn  his  trade,  and  carry  on  the  business  of  manu- 
facturing and  retailing  flax.  This  turned  out  a 
sadly  unlucky  affair.  My  partner  was  a  scoundrel 
of  the  first  water,  who  made  money  by  the  mystery 
of  thieving,  and  to  finish  the  whole,  while  we  were 
welcoming  carousal  to  the  New  Year,  our  shop,  by 
the  drunken  carelessness  of  my  partner's  wife,  took 
fire,  and  was  burned  to  ashes ;  and  left  me  like  a  true 
poet,  not  worth  a  sixpence."*     In  Irvine  his  reading 

*  From  orig.  in  Brit.  Museum.  Burns  wrote  an  interesting 
and  affecting  letter  to  his  father,  from  Irvine.     Dr.   Currie 


loo  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

dates  it  1781,  which  we  think  is  an  error.  The  poet's  state- 
ment is  corroborated  by  his  brother's  narrative,  and  the  stone 
chimney  of  the  room  occupied  b}^  the  poet  is  inscribed, 
evidently  by  his  own  hand,  "  R.  B.  1782."  He  consoled  him- 
self for  his  loss  after  this  fashion: — 

"  O,  why  the  deuce  should  I  repine, 
And  be  an  ill  foreboder  ? 
I'm  twenty-three,  and  five  feet  nine, 
I'll  go  and  be  a  sodger." 

was  only  increased,  he  says,  by  two  volumes  of 
Pamela^  and  one  of  Ferdinand^  Count  Fathom^  which 
gave  him  some  idea  of  novels.  Rhyme,  except 
some  religious  pieces  that  are  in  print,  he  had  given 
up,  but  meeting  with  Fergusson's  Scottish  Poems ^  he 
*' strung  anew  his  lyre  with  emulating  vigor."  He 
also  formed  a  friendship  for  a  young  fellow,  ''a  very 
noble  character,"  Richard  Brown,  and  with  others  of 
a  freer  manner  of  thinking  and  living  than  he  had 
been  used  to,  *'the  consequence  of  which  was,"  he 
says, "  that  soon  after  I  resumed  the  plough,  I  wrote 
the  Poefs  Welcome'''  (to  his  illegitimate  child).  But 
this  was  not  till  the  summer  of  1 784.  Before  leaving 
Lochlea  he  became  a  Freemason. 

MOSSGIEL. 

1784 — (Twenty-five). 

February  13. — William  Burnes  died  at  Lochlea  in 
his  sixty-fourth  year, his  affairs  in  utter  ruin.  His  sons 
and  two  grown-up  daughters  ranked  as  creditors  of 
their  father  for  arrears  in  wages,  and  raised  a  little 
money  to  stock  another  farm.  This  new  farm  was 
that  of  Mossgiel,  parish  of  Mauchline,  which  had 
been  sub-let  to  them  by  Gavin  Hamilton,  writer  (or 
attorney)  in  Mauchline.  They  entered  on  the  farm 
in  March:  *'Come,  go  to,  I  will  be  wise, "  resolved 
the  poet,  but  bad  seed  and  a  late  harvest  deprived 
them    of    half    their    expected    crop.     Poetry  was 


THE  BURNS  'AL^IANAii  \ ,  /  • ''.  ?'' '.  \  f<j'i> 

henceforth  to  be  the  only  successful  vocation  of 
Robert  Bums.  To  this  year  may  be  assigned  the 
Epistle  to  John  Rankine  (a  strain  of  rich  humor,  but 
indelicate),  and  some  minor  pieces.  In  April  or 
May  he  commenced  his  acquaintance  with  * '  Bonnie 
Jean  " — Jean  Armour — an  event  which  colored  all 
his  future  life,  imparting  to  it  its  brightest  lights 
and  its  darkest  shadows. 

1 785 — (Twenty-six). 

In  January  the  Epistle  to  Davie  completed :  Death 
and  Doctor  Hornbook  written  about  February.  Epis- 
tle to  J,  Lapraik^  April  i,  21,  and  September  13. 
Epistle  to  IV.  Simpson  in  May.  The  Ttva  Herds ^  or 
the  Holy  Tulzte  :  this  satire  was  the  first  of  his  poetic 
offspring  that  saw  the  light  (excepting  some  of  his 
songs),  and  it  was  received  by  a  certain  description 
of  the  clergy,  as  well  as  laity,  with  a  "roar  of 
applause."  Burns  had  now  taken  his  side  with  the 
*'  New  Light,"  or  rationalistic  section  of  the  church, 
then  in  violent  antagonism  to  the  "Auld  Light,"  or 
evangelistic  party,  which  comprised  the  bulk  of  the 
lower  and  middling  classes.  To  this  year  belong 
The  Jolly  Beggars^  Halloween^  The  Cotter's  Saturday 
Nighty  Man  was  made  to  Mourn^  Address  to  the  Deil^ 
To  a  Mouse,  A  Winter  Nighty  Holy  Willie's  Prayer, 
and  The  Holy  Fair  (early  MS.  in  British  Museum), 
Epistle  to  James  Smith,  etc. 

1786 — (Twenty-seven). 

In  rapid  succession  are  produced  Scotch  Drink, 
The  Author's  Earnest  Cry  and  Prayer,  The  Twa  Dogs, 
The  Ordination,  Address,  to  the  Unco  Guid,  To  a  Moun- 
tain Daisy,  Epistle  to  a  Young  Friend,  A  Bard's 
Epitaph,  The  Lament,  Despo7idency,  etc.  Such  a  body 
of  original  poetry,  written  within  about  twelve 
months, — poetry   so   natural,    forcible,    and    pictur- 


io2  ■'  '■  ;  .'' :  •■ , .'  '\tH£/^.URNS  ALMANAC. 

esque,  so  quaint,  sarcastic,  humorous,  and  tender, — 
had  unquestionably  not  appeared  since  Shakespeare. 
Misfortunes,    however,    were    gathering   round   the 
poet.     The  farm  had  proved  a  failure,  and  the  con- 
nection with  Jean  Armour  brought  grief  and  shame. 
He  gave  her  a  written  acknowledgment  of  marriage, 
but  at  the  urgent  entreaty  of   her   father  she  con- 
sented   that   this    document   should    be   destroyed. 
The  poet  was  frantic  with  distress  and  indignation. 
He  resolved  on  quitting  the  country,  engaged  to  go 
out  to  Jamaica  as  book-keeper  on  an  estate,  and,  to 
raise  money  for  his  passage,  arranged  to  publish  his 
poems.     Subscription  papers  were  issued  in  April. 
In    the    meantime,    in    bitter    resentment    of    the 
perfidy,  as  he  esteemed  it,  of  the  unfortunate  Jean 
Armour,   he   renewed   his   intimacy  with    a   former 
love,   Mary   Campbell,   or   "Highland    Mary,"  who 
had  been  a  servant  in  the  family  of  Gavin  Hamilton, 
and  was  now  dairy-maid  at  Coilsfield.     He  proposed 
marriage  to  Mary  Campbell,  was  accepted,  and  Mary 
left  her  service  and  went  to  her  parents  in  Argyle- 
shire,  preliminary  to  her  union  with  the  poet.     They 
parted  on  the  banks  of  the  Ayr,  on  Sunday,  May  14, 
exchanging  Bibles  and  vowing  eternal  fidelity.     No 
more  is  heard  of  Mary  until  after  her  death,  which 
took   place   in    October   of   this   year.     The   poems 
were  published  in  August,  an  edition  of  600  copies, 
and  were  received  with  enthusiastic  applause.     The 
poet   cleared    about   ^20    by   the   volume,    took    a 
passage  in  the  first  ship  that  was  to  sail  from  the 
Clyde    (nothing   was   said    of    Mary   accompanying 
him),  and  was  preparing  to  embark,  when  a  letter 
from    Dr.   Blacklock,  offering  encouragement  for  a 
second  edition,  roused  his  poetic  ambition,  and  led 
him  to  try  his  fortune  in  Edinburgh.     Before  start- 
ing he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mrs.   Dun  lop,  the 
most  valued   and  one  of  the  most  accomplished  of 
his  correspondents. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  103 

EDINBURGH. 

November  28,  1786. — Burns  reaches  the  Scottish 
capital,  and  instantly  becomes  the  lion  of  the  season. 
He  is  courted  and  caressed  by  the  witty,  the  fashion- 
able, and  the  learned — by  Dugald  Stewart,  Harry 
Erskine,  Hugh  Blair,  Adam  Ferguson,  Dr.  Robert- 
son, Lord  Monboddo,  Dr.  Gregory,  Eraser  Tytler, 
Lord  Glencairn,  Lord  Eglinton,  Patrick  Miller  (the 
ingenious  laird  of  Dalswinton),  the  fascinating  Jane, 
Duchess  of  Gordon,  Miss  Burnet,  etc.  Henry  Mac- 
kenzie, the  "Man  of  Feeling,"  writes  a  critique  on 
the  poems  in  the  Lounger^ — the  members  of  the 
Caledonian  Hunt  subscri-be  for  a  hundred  copies  of 
the  new  edition, — and  the  poet  is  in  a  fair  way,  as  he 
says,  of  becoming  as  eminent  as  Thomas  a  Kempis 
or  John  Bunyan. 

1787 — (Twenty-eight). 

Burns  applies  for  and  obtains  permission  to  erect 
a  tombstone  in  Canongate  Churchyard  over  the 
remains  of  Fergusson  the  poet.  In  April  appears 
the  second  edition  of  the  Poems,  consisting  of  3,000 
copies,  with  a  list  of  subscribers  prefixed,  and  a 
portrait  of  the  poet.  In  this  edition  appeared  Death 
and  Dr.  Hornbook^  the  Ordination^  and  Address  to  the 
Unco  Guid^  which  were  excluded  from  the  first  edition, 
and  several  new  pieces,  the  best  of  which  are  the 
Brigs  of  Ayr  and  Tarn  Samson's  Elegy.  On  the  5th 
of  May  the  poet  sets  off  on  a  tour  with  a  young 
friend,  Robert  Ainslie,  in  order  to  visit  the  most 
interesting  scenes  in  the  south  of  Scotland.  Cross- 
ing the  Tweed  over  Coldstream  bridge,  Burns  knelt 
down  on  the  English  side  and  poured  forth,  uncov- 
ered, and  with  strong  emotion,  the  prayer  for 
Scotland  contained  in  the  last  two  stanzas  of  the 
Cotter's  Saturday  Night.  June  4,  he  was  made  an 
honorary   burgess   of   the  town    of   Dumfries,  after 


I04  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

which  he  proceeded  to  Ayrshire,  and  arriv^ed  at 
MauchHne  on  the  9th  of  June.  *'It  will  easily  be 
conceived,"  says  Dr.  Currie,  "with  what  pleasure 
and  pride  he  was  received  by  his  mother,  his 
brothers,  and  sisters.  He  had  left  them  poor  and 
comparatively  friendless;  he  returned  to  them  high 
in  public  estimation,  and  easy  in  his  circumstances." 
At  this  time  the  poet  renewed  his  intimacy  with 
Jean  Armour.  Towards  the  end  of  the  month  he 
made  a  short  Highland  tour,  in  which  he  visited 
Loch  Lomond  and  Dumbarton,  and  returning  to 
Mauchline,  we  find  him  (July  25)  presiding  as 
Deputy  Grand  Master  of  the  Tarbolton  Mason 
Lodge,  and  admitting  Professor  Dugald  Stewart, 
Mr.  Alexander,  of  Ballochmyle,  and  others,  as  hon- 
orary members  of  the  Lodge.  On  the  25th  of 
August  the  poet  set  off  from  Edinburgh  on  a  north- 
em  tour  with  Willliam  Nicol  of  the  High  School. 
They  visited  Bannockburn,  spent  two  days  at  Blair 
with  the  Duke  of  Athole  and  family,  proceeded  as 
far  as  Inverness,  then  by  way  of  Elgin,  Fochabers 
(dining  with  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Gordon),  on 
to  Aberdeen,  Stonehaven,  Montrose,  where  he  met 
his  relatives  the  Burneses.  Arrived  at  Edinburgh 
on  the  1 6th  of  September.  In  December  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Clarinda^  or  Mrs.  M'Lehose,  with 
whom  he  kept  up  a  passionate  correspondence  for 
about  three  months.  Overset  by  a  drunken  coach- 
man, and  sent  home  with  a  severely  bruised  knee» 
which  confined  him  for  several  weeks.  Mr.  A. 
Wood,  surgeon  "  lang  sandy  Wood,"  applies  to  Mr. 
Graham,  of  Fintry,  Commissioner  of  Excise,  and 
gets  Burns's  name  enrolled  among  the  number  of 
expectant  Excise  officers.  During  all  this  winter 
the  poet  zealously  assists  Mr.  James  Johnson  in  his 
publication,  the  Scots  Musical  Museum. 

1 788 — Twenty-nine). 
Left    Edinburgh    for    Dumfries   to    inspect    Mr. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  105 

Miller's  lands  at  Dalswinton.  Stopped  by  the  way 
at  Mossgiel,  February  23.  Poor  Jean  Armour,  who 
had  ag^ain  loved  not  wisely,  but  too  well,  was  living 
apart,  separated  from  her  parents,  and  supported  by 
Burns.  He  visited  her  the  day  before  his  departure 
for  Dumfries  (apparently  February  24),  and  it  is 
painful  to  find  him  writing  thus  to  Clarinda:  **  I, 
this  morning  as  I  came  home,  called  for  a  certain 
woman.  I  am  disgusted  with  her.  I  cannot  endure 
her.  I,  while  my  heart  smote  me  for  the  profanity, 
tried  to  compare  her  with  my  Clarinda;  'twas  setting 
the  expiring  glimmer  of  a  farthing  taper  beside  the 
cloudless  glory  of  the  meridian  sun.  Here  was  taste- 
less insipidity,  vulgarity  of  soul,  and  mercenary 
fawning;  there,  polished  good  sense,  Heaven-born 
genius,  and  the  most  generous,  the  most  delicate, 
the  most  tender  passion.  I  have  done  with  her,  and 
she  with  me."  *  In  less  than  two  months  they  were 
married !  In  this,  as  in  the  Highland  Mary  episode, 
Burns's  mobility^  or  "excessive  susceptibility  of 
immediate  impressions,"  |  seems  something  marvel- 
ous, and  more  akin  to  the  French  than  the  Scotch 
character.  Returned  to  Edinburgh  in  March,  and 
on  the  13th  took  a  lease  of  the  farm  of  Ellisland,  on 
the  banks  of  the  Nith.  On  the  19th  settled  with 
Creech,  the  profits  from  the  Edinburgh  edition  and 
copyright  being  about  ;£5oo,  of  which  the  poet  gave 
;^i8o  to  his  brother  Gilbert,  as  a  loan,  to  enable 
him  to  continue  (with  the  family)  at  Mossgiel.  In 
the  latter  part  of  April  Burns  was  privately  married 
to  Jean  Armour,  and  shortly  afterwards  wrote  on 
her  his  two  charming  .songs  Of  a'  the  airts  the  wind 
can  blaw  and  O,  were  I  on  Parnassus  hill  I 

*  From  the  original,  published  in  Banffshire  Journal. 

J  So  defined  by  Byron,  who  was  himself  a  victim  to  this 
"unhappy  attribute."  See  "  Don  Juan,"  canto  xvi.  97. 


io6  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC, 

ELLISLAND. 

In  June  the  poet  went  to  reside  on  his  farm,  his 
wife  remaining  at  Mauchline  until  a  house  should  be 
built  at  Ellisland.  Formed  the  acquaintance  of 
Captain  Riddel,  of  Glenriddel,  a  gentleman  of  liter- 
ary and  antiquarian  tastes,  who  resided  at  Friars 
Carse,  within  a  mile  from  Ellisland.  On  28th  June 
wrote  Verses  in  Friars  Carse  Hermitage.  August  5, 
the  poet  at  Mauchline  made  public  acknowledgment 
of  his  marriage  before  the  Kirk  Session,  at  the  same 
time  giving  "a  guinea  note  for  behoof  of  the  poor." 
In  December  conducted  Mrs.  Burns  to  the  banks  of 
the  Nith.     I  hae  a  ivife  d'  my  ain  ! 

1789 — (Thirty). 

Visited  Edinburgh  in  February,  and  received 
about  ;^5o  more  of  copyright  money  from  Creech. 
August  18,  son  born  to  the  poet,  named  Francis 
Wallace.  About  the  same  time  receiv^ed  appoint- 
ment to  the  Excise.  October  16,  the  great  baccha- 
nalian contest  for  the  Whistle  took  place  at  Friars 
Carse  in  presence  of  the  poet.  On  the  20th  of 
October  (as  calculated,  and  indeed  proved  by  Mr. 
Chambers)  the  sublime  and  affecting  lyric.  To  Mary 
in  Heaven^  was  composed.  Met  Grose,  the  antiquary 
at  Friars  Carse,  and  afterwards  wrote  the  humorous 
poem  On  Captain  Grose' s  Peregrinations.  In  Decem- 
ber was  written  the  election  ballad  The  Five  Carlines. 


1790 — (Thirty-one). 

January  11. — Writes  to  Gilbert  that  his  farm  is  a 
ruinous  affair.  On  the  14th,  addressing  his  friend 
Mr.  Dunbar,  W.S.,  relative  to  his  Excise  appoint- 
ment, he  says:  "  I  found  it  a  very  convenient  busi- 
iness  to  have  jC^^o  per  annum;  nor  have  I  felt  owy 
of  those  mortitvmci*  circumstances  in  it  I  was  led  to 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  107 

fear."  The  duties  were  hard;  he  had  to  ride  at 
least  200  miles  every  week,  but  he  still  contributed 
largely  to  the  Scots  Musical  Museum,  wrote  the  elegy 
On  Captaiji  Matthew  Henderson  (one  of  the  most 
exquisite  of  the  poet's  productions),  and  in  autumn 
produced  Tarn  &  Shanter,  by  universal  assent  the 
crowning  glory  and  masterpiece  of  its  author. 

1 79 1 — (Thirty-two.) 

In  February  wrote  Lament  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots, 
and  Lament  for  fames  Earl  of  Glencarin.  In  March 
had  his  right  arm  broken  by  the  fall  of  his  horse, 
and  was  some  weeks  disabled  from  writing.  In  this 
month  also  occurred  an  event  which  probably  caused 
deeper  pain  than  the  broken  arm.  First,  as  Mr. 
Chambers  says,  ''we  have  a  poor  girl  lost  to  the 
reputable  world ;  "  (this  was  "Anna  with  the  gowden 
locks,"  niece  to  the  hostess  of  the  Globe  Tavern;) 
"next  we  have  Burns  seeking  an  asylum  for  a  help- 
less infant  at  his  brother's;  then  a  magnanimous 
wife  interposing  with  the  almost  romantically  gen- 
erous offer  to  become  herself  its  nurse  and  guardian.  "* 
April  9,  a  third  son  born  to  the  poet,  and  named 
William  Nicol.  At  the  close  of  the  month  the  poet 
sold  his  crop  at  Ellisland,  "and  sold  it  well." 
Declined  to  attend  the  crowning  of  Thomson's  bust 
at  Ednam,  but  wrote  verses  for  the  occasion.  In 
November  made  a  short  visit — his  last — to  Edin- 
burgh, and  shortly  afterwards  wrote  his  inimitable 
farewell  to  Clarinda,  Aefond  kiss  and  then  we  sever. 
The  fourth  stanza  of  this  song  Sir  Walter  Scott  said 
contained  "the  essence  of  a  thousand  love  tales." 

*  Mrs.  Burns  was  much  attached  to  the  child,  who  remained 
with  her  till  she  was  seventeen  years  of  age,  when  she  married 
a  soldier,  John  Thomson  of  the  Stirling  Militia.  She  is  still 
living,  and  strongly  resembles  her  father.  Poor  Anna  the 
mother  felt  deeply  the  disgrace  ;  she,  however,  made  a  decent 
marriage  in  Leith,  but  died  comparatively  young,  without  any 
family  by  her  husband. 


io8  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 


DUMFRIES. 

At  Martinraus  (Nov.  1 1 ),  the  poet  having  disposed 
of  his  stock  and  other  effects  at  EUisland,  and  sur- 
rendered the  lease  of  the  farm  to  Mr.  Miller  the 
proprietor,  removed  with  his  family  to  the  town  of 
Dumfries.  He  occupied  for  a  year  and  a  half  three 
rooms  of  a  second  floor  on  the  north  side  of  Bank 
Street  (then  called  the  Wee  Vennel).  On  taking  up 
his  residence  in  the  town,  Burns  was  w^ell  received 
by  the  higher  class  of  inhabitants  and  the  neighbor- 
ing gentry.  One  of  the  most  accomplished  of  the 
latter  was  Mrs.  Walter  Riddel  {nee  Marie  Woodley), 
then  aged  onl)^  about  eighteen.  This  lady,  with  her 
husband,  a  brother  of  Captain  Riddel  of  Glenriddel, 
lived  on  a  small  estate  about  four  miles  from  Dum- 
fries, -which  in  compliment  to  the  lady  they  called 
Woodley  Park  (now  Goldielea). 

1792 — (Thirty-three). 

February  27. — Burns  behaved  gallantly  in  seizing 
and  boarding  a  smuggling  brig  in  the  Solway.  The 
vessel,  with  her  arms  and  stores,  was  sold  by  auction 
in  Dumfries,  and  Burns  purchased  four  carronades 
or  small  guns,  for  which  he  paid  ^3.  These  he 
sent,  with  a  letter,  to  the  French  Convention,  but 
they  were  retained  at  Dover  by  the  Custom-house 
authorities.  This  circumstance  is  supposed  to  have 
drawn  on  the  poet  the  notice  of  his  jealous  superiors. 
He  warmly  sympathized  with  the  French  people  in 
their  struggle  against  despotism,  and  the  Board  of 
Excise  ordered  an  inquiry  into  the  poet's  political 
conduct,  though  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  repri- 
mand was  ever  given  him.  In  vSeptember  Mr. 
George  Thomson,  Edinburgh,  commenced  his  pub- 
lication of  national  songs  and  melodies,  and  Bums 
cordiallv   lent   assistance    to   the   undertaking,    but 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  109 

disclaimed  all  idea  or  acceptance  of  pecuniary  re- 
muneration. On  the  14th  of  November  he  trans- 
mitted to  Thomson  the  song  of  Highland  Mary,  and 
next  month  one  of  the  most  arch  and  humorous  of 
all  ditties,  Duncan  Gray  cam  here  to  woo. 

1 793 — (Thirty  -four). 

The  poet  continues  his  invaluable  and  disinterested 
labors  for  Mr.  Thomson's  publication.  In  July  he 
makes  an  excursion  into  Galloway  with  his  friend 
Mr.  Syme,  stamp  distributor,  and  according  to  that 
gentleman  (though  Burn's  own  statement  on  the 
subject  is  different),  he  composed  his  national  song, 
Scots  wha  hae^  in  the  midst  of  a  thunder-storm  on  the 
wilds  of  Kenmure.  The  song  was  sent  to  Thomson 
in  September,  along  with  no  less  popular,  Auld  Lang 
Syne.  At  Whitsuntide  the  poet  removed  from  the 
'*  Wee  Vennel  "  to  a  better  house  (rent  £^  per  an- 
num) in  the  Mill-hole  Brae  (now  Burns  Street),  and 
in  this  house  he  lived  until  his  death.  His  widow 
continued  to  occupy  it  till  her  death,  March  26,  1834. 

1794 — (Thirty-five). 

At  a  dinner-party  at  Woodley  Park,  on  one  occa- 
sion the  poet,  like  most  of  the  guests,  having  ex- 
ceeded in  wine,  was  guilty  of  some  act  of  rudeness 
to  the  accomplished  hostess  which  she  and  her 
friends  resented  very  warmly.  A  rupture  took 
place,  and  for  nearly  a  twelvemonth  there  was  no  in- 
tercourse between  the  parties.  During  this  interval 
Burns  wrote  several  lampoons  on  Mrs.  Riddel, 
wholly  unworthy  of  him  as  a  man  or  as  a  poet.  Ap- 
ril 4,  Captain  Riddel  of  Glenriddel,  died  unreconciled 
to  Bums,  yet  the  latter  honored  his  memory  with  a 
sonnet.  August  12,  another  son  bom  to  the  poet, 
and  named  James  Glencaim.     During  this  autumn 


no  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

and  winter  Burns  wrote  some  of  his  finest  songs,  in- 
spired by  the  charms  of  Jane  Lorimer,  the  "Chloris" 
of  many  a  lyric.  In  November  he  composed  his 
lively  song,  Contented  wi'  little  and  cantie  wV  mair, 
which  he  intended  as  a  picture  of  his  own  mind;  but 
it  is  only,  as  Mr.  Chambers  says,  the  picture  of  one 
aspect  of  his  mind.  Mr.  Perry  of  the  Morning 
Chronicle  wishes  to  engage  Burns  as  a  contributor  to 
his  paper,  but  the  "truly  generous  offer"  is  declined, 
lest  connection  with  the  Whig  journal  should  injure 
his  prospects  in  the  Excise.  For  a  short  time  he 
acted  as  supervisor,  and  thought  that  his  political 
sins  were  forgiven. 

1 795 — (Thirty-six). 

In  January  the  poet  composed  his  manly  and  in- 
dependent song  For  a'  that  and  a'  that.  His  inter- 
course with  Maria  Riddel  is  renewed,  and  she  sends 
him  occasionally  a  book,  or  a  copy  of  verses,  or  a 
ticket  for  the  theatre.  He  never  relaxes  his  genial 
labors  for  the  musical  works  of  Johnson  and  Thom- 
son, and  he  writes  a  series  of  election  ballads  in  favor 
of  the  Whig  candidate,  Mr.  Heron.  He  joins  the 
Dumfriesshire  corps  of  Volunteers,  enrolled  in  the 
month  of  March,  and  writes  his  loyal  and  patriotic 
song.  Does  haughty  Gaul  invasion  threat  f  also  his  fine 
national  strain,  Their  groves  of  sweet  myrtle  let  foreign 
lands  reckon^  and  one  of  the  best  of  his  ballads,  Last 
May  a  braw  wooer.  The  poet's  health,  however,  gives 
way,  and  premature  age  has  set  in. 

1796 — (Thirty-seven). 

The  decline  of  the  poet  is  accelerated  by  an  acci- 
dental circumstance.  One  night  in  January  he  sat 
late  in  the  Globe  Tavern.  There  was  deep  snow  on 
the  ground,  and  in  going  home  he  sank  down,  over- 
powered by  drowsiness  and  the  liquor  he  had  taken, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  iii 

and  slept  for  some  hours  in  the  open  air.  From  the 
cold  caught  on  this  occasion  he  never  wholly  recov- 
ered. He  still,  however,  continued  his  song-writing, 
and  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  most  touching  of 
his  lyrics  was  also  one  of  his  latest.  This  was  the 
song  beginning  Here's  a  health  to  ane  I lo'e  dear,  writ- 
ten on  Jessy  Lewars,  a  maiden  of  eighteen,  sister  to 
a  brother  exciseman,  who  proved  a  ''ministering  an- 
gel" to  the  poet  in  his  last  illness.  In  May,  another 
election  called  forth  another  ballad,  Wha  will  buy  my 
troggin  f  And  about  the  middle  of  June  we  find  the 
poet  writing  despondingly  to  his  old  friend  Johnson, 
and  requesting  a  copy  of  the  Scots  Musical  Museum 
to  present  to  a  young  lady.  This  was  no  doubt  the 
copy  presented  to  Jessy  Lewars,  June  26,  inscribed 
with  the  verses,  Thine  be  the  volumes,  Jessy  fair.  As 
a  last  effort  for  health.  Burns  went  on  the  4th  of 
July  to  Brow,  a  sea-bathing  hamlet  on  the  Solway. 
There  he  was  visited  by  Maria  Riddel,  who  thought 
"the  stamp  of  death  was  imprinted  on  his  features." 
He  was  convinced  himself  that  his  illness  would 
prove  fatal,  and  some  time  before  this  he  had  said  to 
his  wife,  ** Don't  be  afraid:  I'll  be  more  respected  a 
hundred  years  after  I  am  dead,  than  I  am  at  pres- 
ent." Mrs.  Riddel  saw  the  poet  again  on  the  5th  of 
July,  when  they  parted  to  meet  no  more.  On  the 
7th  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Alexander  Cunningham  to 
move  the  Commissioners  of  Excise  to  continue  his 
full  salary  of  ^^50  instead  of  reducing  it,  as  was  the 
rule  in  the  case  of  excisemen  on  duty,  to  ^35.  Mr. 
Findlater,  his  superior  officer,  says  he  had  no  doubt 
this  would  have  been  done  had  the  poet  lived.  On 
the  10th  Bums  wrote  to  his  brother  as  to  his  hope- 
less condition,  his  debts,  and  his  despair ;  and  on  the 
same  day  he  addressed  a  request  to  his  father-in-law, 
stern  old  James  Armour,  that  he  would  write  to 
Mrs.  Armour,  then  in  Fife,  to  come  to  the  assistance 
of  her  daughter,  the  poet's  wife,  during  the  time   of 


1 12  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

her  confinement.  His  thoughts  turned  also  to  his 
friend  Mrs.  Dunlop,  who  had  unaccountably  been 
silent  for  some  time.  He  recalled  her  interesting 
correspondence:  *'  With  what  pleasure  did  I  use  to 
break  up  the  seal!  The  remembrance  adds  yet  one 
pulse  more  to  my  poor  palpitating  heart.  Farewell !" 
Close  on  this  dark  hour  of  anguish  came  a  lawyer's 
letter  demanding  payment — and  no  doubt  hinting  at 
the  serious  consequences  of  non-payment — of  a  hab- 
erdasher's account.  This  legal  missive  served  to 
conjure  up  before  the  distracted  poet,  the  image  of  a 
jail  with  all  its  horrors,  and  on  the  12th  he  wrote 
two  letters — one  to  his  cousin  in  Montrose  begging 
an  advance  of  ^^lo,  and  one  to  Mr.  George  Thom- 
son imploring  £^^,  "Forgive,  forgive  me!"  He 
left  the  sea-side  on  the  i8th,  weak  and  feverish,  but 
was  able  the  same  day,  on  arriving  at  his  house  in 
Dumfries,  to  address  a  second  note  to  James  Armour, 
reiterating  the  wish  expressed  six  days  before,  but 
without  elicting  any  reply:  '*  Do,  for  Heaven's  sake, 
send  Mrs.  Armour  here  immediately."  From  this 
period  he  was  closely  confined  to  bed  (according  to 
the  statement  of  his  widow),  and  was  scarcely  ''^him- 
self for  half  an  hour  together.  He  was  aware  of 
his  infirmity,  and  told  his  wife  that  she  was  to'  touch 
him  and  remind  him  when  he  was  going  wrong. 
One  day  he  got  out  of  his  bed,  and  his  wife  found 
him  sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  room  with  the  bed- 
clothes about  him ;  she  got  assistance,  and  he  suf- 
fered himself  to  be  gently  led  back  to  bed.  The  day 
before  he  died  he  called  very  quickly  and  with  a  hale 
voice,  *'  Gilbert!  Gilbert!  "  On  the  morning  of  the 
2 1  St,  at  daybreak,  death  was  obviously  near  at  hand, 
and  the  children  were  sent  for.  They  had  been  re- 
moved to  the  house  of  Jessy  Lewars  and  her  brother, 
in  order  that  the  poet's  dwelling  might  be  kept 
quiet,  and  they  were  now  summoned  back  that  they 
might  have  a  last  look  at  their  illustrious  father  in 
life.     He  was  insensible,  his  mind  lost  in  delirium, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC,  113 

and,  according  to  his  eldest  son,  his  last  words  were, 
"  That  d d  rascal,  Matthew  Penn!  " — an  execra- 
tion against  the  legal  agent  who  had  written  the 
dunning  letter.  And  so  ended  this  sad  and  stormy 
life-drama,  and  the  poet  passed,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  has 
said,  ' '  not  softly  but  speedily  into  that  still  country 
where  the  hail-storms  and  fire-showers  do  not  reach, 
and  the  heaviest-laden  wayfarer  at  length  lays  down 
his  load. "  On  the  evening  of  Sunday,  the  24th  of 
July,  the  poefs  remains  were  removed  from  his 
house  to  the  Town  Hall,  and  the  next  day  were  in- 
terred with  military  honors. 


BURNS  CLUBS  IN  AMERICA. 

Robert  Bums  Association,  Philadelphia. 
Tam  o*  Shanter  Club,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Burns  Club,  Newport  News,  Va. 
Waverley  Society  and  Burns  Club,  Pittsburgh,  Pa. 
The  Burns  Society  of  the  State  of  New  York,  New 
York,  N.  Y. 

Robert  Bums  Club,  Yonkers,  N.  Y. 

Burns  Club,  Waterbury,  N.  H. 

Burns  Club,  West  New  Brighton,  Staten  Id,  N.  Y. 

Burns  Club,  Brantford,  (Ontario.) 

Burns  Club,  Utica,  N.  Y. 

Robert  Bums  Club,  Chester,  Pa. 

North  Eastern  Burns  Club,  Philadelphia.  Pa. 

In  addition  to  the  above,  every  Caledonian  Club, 
St.  Andrew's  Society,  Order  of  Scottish  Clans,  Or- 
der of  Sons  of  Scotland,  and  various  other  Societies 
throughout  the  United  States  and  Canada  hold  a 
Burns  Anniversary  Celebration  every  25th  of  Jan- 
uary. 


114  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

STATUES  AND  BUSTS  OF  BURNS. 

Statue  in  Edinburgh. 

Statue  in  Perth. 

Statue  in  New  York. 

Statue  in  Dundee. 

Statue  on  Thames  Embankment,  London. 

Bust  in  Westminster  Abbey,  London. 

Statue  in  George  Square,  Glasgow. 

Statue  in  Kay  Park,  Kilmarnock. 

Bust  in  Monument  on  Doon  side. 

Sculptured  figure  in  Mausoleum,  Dumfries. 

Statue  in  Dumfries. 

Statue  in  Ballarat,  Australia. 

Statue  in  Albany,  N.  Y. 

Statue  in  Dunedin,  New  Zealand. 

Statue  in  Montrose. 

Bust  in  Wallace  Monument,  near  Stirling. 

Statue  in  Ayr. 

Statue  in  Aberdeen. 

Statue  in  Barre,  Vt. 

Statue  in  Belfast. 

Statue  in  Paisley. 

Bust  in  Metropolitan  Museum,  New  York,  by  Cal- 
verley. 

Statuette  in  London,  by  P.  R.  Montford. 

Statue  (in  plaster)  Cairns,  Boston,  by  H.  McNair. 

Bust  owned  by  Andrew  Carnegie,  by  Calverley. 

Bust  owned  by  Peter  Kinnear,  of  Albany,  by  Cal- 
verley. 

Statue  in  Irvine. 

Bust  in  Buffalo  Library,  by  Langenbein. 

Statue  in  Artist's  Studio,  by  W.  Clark  Noble. 

Bust  (new  study)  in  Artist's  Studio,  by  Calverley. 

Medallion  (new  study)  in  Artist's  Studio,  by  Cal- 
verley. 

Bust  in  Tullie  House,  Carlyle,  England,  by  D.  W. 
Stevenson. 

Statue  in  Leith. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  115 

BOOKS  SUBSCRIBED  FOR  BY  BURNS. 

Blind  Harry. — Metrical  History  of  Sir  William 
Wallace,  Knight,  of  Ellerslie,  carefully  transcribed 
from  the  manuscript  copy  in  the  Advocate's  Library, 
Edinburgh,  under  the  eye  of  the  Earl  of  Buchan, 
with  Notes,  etc.,  Pocket  volume  edition,  with  por- 
trait and  frontispieces,  3  vols,  i8mo,  cf.,  Morrison, 
Perth,  1790.  Among  the  list  of  subscribers'  names 
appears  that  of  ''Mr.  Robert  Burns,  EUisland." 

The  Practical  Figurer,  by  William  Halbert, 
schoolmaster,  Auchinleck.  Paisley,  1789.  The  poet's 
name  appears  among  the  list  of  subscribers  thus : — 
*'  Robert  Burns  of  Parnassus." 

Poems,  consisting  of  miscellaneous  pieces,  by 
James  Mylne,  Lochill,  1790.  In  the  list  of  subscri- 
bers' names  is  "Mr.  Robert  Burns,  EUisland." 


A  CENTURY  OF  BURNS  BIOGRAPHY. 
By  William  Wallace. 


On  the  twenty-first  of  July,  1896,  was  completed 
that  hundred  years  from  the  death  of  Robert  Bums 
which,  according  to  a  generally  credited,  if  not 
absolutely  verified  tradition,  he  told  his  Jean  would 
be  required  to  do  justice  to  his  memory.  In  the 
March  number  of  the  Monthly  Magazine  and  British 
Register  for  1797,  there  appeared  the  first  instal- 
ment of  the  first  biography  of  the  poet — the  modest 
beginning  of  the  most  extraordinary  literature  of 
the  "  Memoirs"  order  which  the  world  has  seen,  or 
is  likely  to  see.  It  was  signed  "  H,"  and  came  from 
the  pen  of  Robert  Heron,  an  unfortunate — and 
according  to  Allan  Cunningham — dissipated  "stickit 


ii6  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

minister''  and  hack  of  letters,  who  died  in  1807,  and 
at  the  age  of  forty- three,  in  the  Fever  Hospital  of 
St.  Pancras,  to  which  he  had  removed  from  a  debt- 
or's cell  in  Newgate.  Heron's  biography  was  antici- 
pated, however,  in  the  same  magazine  by  anony- 
mous '*  stanzas"  (in  reality  a  poem  of  great  length) 
to  the  memory  of  Robert  Burns.  These  stanzas 
appeared  in  the  "original  poetry  department"  of 
the  periodical  in  January  (that  January  which,  had 
the  poet  exciseman  lived,  would  have  witnessed  his 
promotion  to  a  supervisorship),  in  the  company, 
oddly  enough,  of  verses  by  Charles  Lamb,  who 
writes  to  "Sara  and  S.  T.  C.  at  Bristol,"  complain- 
ing that  he  cannot  snatch  a  ' '  fleeting  holiday,  a 
little  week,"  to  see  them,  and  to 

Muse  in  tears  on  that  mysterious  youth 

Cruelly  slighted,  who,  in  evil  hour, 

Shap'd  his  advent'rous  course  to  London  walls. 

There  is,  indeed,  something  almost  pathetically 
prophetic  in  the  character  both  of  the  poetical  and 
of  the  prose  memorials  to  the  genius  of  Burns  which 
appeared  in  the  Monthly  Magazine  ninety-nine  years 
ago.  Upon  the  merits  of  no  man  have  the  poets 
been  more  heartily  united  and  biographers  more 
fatally,  if  not  fiercely,  disunited.  The  anonymous 
writer  of  January,  1797,  closes  his  stanzas  thus: 

High  above  thy  reptile  foes 

Thy  tow'ring  soul  unconquer'd  rose — 

Love  and  the  Muse  their  charms  disclose — 

The  hags  retire  ; 
And  thy  expanded  bosom  glows 

With  heav'nly  fire. 
Go,  Builder  of  a  deathless  name  ! 
Thy  Country's  glory,  and  her  shame  ! 
Go,  and  th'  immortal  guerdon  claim. 

To  Genius  due ; 
Whilst  rolling  centuries  thy  fame 

Shall  still  renew ! 

Here  already  we  have  the  spirit,  if  not  the 
genius  of  Wordsworth's  noble  lines,  of  the  scarcely 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  117 

less  eloquent  Ode  of  Mr.  William  Watson,  one  of 
the  most  eminent  of  living  poets,  and  the  silent 
tears  which,  according  to  Edward  FitzGerald,  were 
wrung  from  the  late  Lord  Tennyson  by  the  sudden 
realization  of  the  glory  of  Doonside  and  the  tragedy 
of  Dumfries,  On  the  other  hand,  Heron  began  his 
biography  with  a  grotesque  inaccuracy,  and  closed 
it  with  the  first  crude  statement  of  the  gravest  of  all 
the  charges  that  have  been  made  against  the  char- 
acter of  Burns,  He  claimed  for  the  poet  that  he 
was  the  product  and  triumph  of  the  Scottish  paroch- 
ial school  system.  This  was  altogether  a  blunder. 
If  Burns  was  a  triumph  of  anything  except  natural 
genius,  he  was  a  triumph  of  private  tuition.  Heron 
further  brought  his  biography  to  a  termination  with 
this  extraordinary  statement:  "Even  in  the  last 
feebleness,  and  amid  the  last  agonies  of  expiring 
life,  yielding  readily  to  any  temptation  that  offered 
the  semblance  of  intemperate  enjoyment,  he  died 
at  Dumfries,  in  the  summer  of  the  year  1796,  while 
he  was  yet  three  or  four  years  under  the  age  of 
forty."  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
biographers  of  Burns,  who  have  followed  in  the 
wake  of  Heron,  have  devoted  more  attention  to 
ascertaining  how  much — or  how  little — truth  there 
is  in  this  damning  declaration,  than  to  the  elucida- 
tion of  any  other  disputed  incident  in  the  life  of  the 
poet. 

In  this  same  year,  1797,  Heron  reprinted  his 
articles  in  the  Monthly  Magazine^  with  additions,  as 
a  biography  of  Robert  Burns,  and  under  his  signa- 
ture. But  immediately  after  the  poet's  death 
arrangements  were  made  for  the  publication  of  an 
authoritative  memoir.  This  work  was  entrusted  to 
Dr.  James  Currie,  a  Liverpool  physician,  a  great 
admirer  of  Burns,  and  a  connection  of  Mrs.  Dunlop. 
Currie  had  many  advantages,  including  access  to 
original  manuscripts  of  poems  and  letters,  which 
have   been   enjoyed  b}''  no  subsequent  biographer. 


Ii8  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

Relatives  of  Burns,  like  his  brother  Gilbert,  and 
surviving-  friends,  like  Syme  of  Rydedale,  were 
understood  to  have  given  him  all  the  help  in  their 
power.  When  Currie's  Life  appeared  in  1800  it  met 
with  an  instantaneous  success.  Few  biographies 
have  passed  through  so  many  editions  as  this  has 
done ;  still  fewer  have  been  subjected  to  such  merci- 
less criticism.  The  weaknesses  of  Currie's  work  are, 
indeed,  only  too  apparent.  He  is  deplorably  inaccu- 
rate in  matters  of  detail.  He  took  unwarrantable 
liberties  with  Burns's  letters.  He  has  been  proved 
to  have  deliberately  misdated  several  of  those  which, 
in  his  last  years,  the  poet  addressed  to  Mrs.  Dunlop. 
He  listened  far  too  readily  to  reports  bearing  un- 
favorably on  the  life  of  a  man  whom  he  had  never 
seen.  It  has  been  said  that  Currie  was  supported 
by  the  authority  of  Burns's  physician,  Dr.  Max- 
well. This  view  has,  however,  been  discredited,  to 
say  the  least,  by  the  fact  that,  while  Currie  ex- 
pressly declares  that  Burns  went  to  the  Brow  Well 
in  the  last  months  of  his  life  in  opposition  to  the 
views  of  his  medical  attendant,  letters  published 
within  a  comparatively  recent  period  prove  that  the 
poet  took  this  step  in  accordance  with  the  advice  of 
that  attendant !  But  of  Dr.  Currie's  good  intentions 
there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever,  and  his  Life  is 
still,  within  certain  limits,  authoritative. 

It  was  followed  in  1808  by  Cromek's  Reliqiies, 
which,  althoug-h  mainly  notable  as  giving  poems  by 
Burns  which  up  to  that  period,  had  not  seen  the 
light,  was  valuable  also  for  certain  biographical 
passag-es.  One  of  these  —  that  dealing  with  the 
story  of  Highland  Mary — has  become  part  and 
parcel  of  the  imperishable  poetical  romance.  Three 
years  later.  Professor  Josiah  Walker,  w^ho  knew 
Burns  personally,  published  a  biography  by  way  of 
preface  to  Morison's  editions  of  the  poems.  It  con- 
tained reminiscences  which  are  still  of  some  interest 
and  even  Inog-raphical  value,  in  spite  of  at  least  one 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  119 

serious  mistake  in  dates  which  they  contained,  and 
of  the  scarification  to  which  they  and  their  author 
were  subjected  at  the  hands  of  Professor  John 
Wilson.  A  reaction  now  set  in  against  the  view  of 
Bums's  latest  years — that  he  became  intemperate 
and  dissolute — first  given  by  Heron,  and  counten- 
anced to  a  considerable  extent  by  Currie.  It  be- 
came known  that  men  like  Findlater,  his  official 
superior,  and  his  neighbor,  Gray  the  teacher,  indig- 
nantly denied  these  charges,  and  declared  that  their 
'friend,  although  he  lived  a  freely  social  life,  never 
fell  into  sottishness.  The  first  fruits  of  this  reaction 
was  the  sympathetic  biography  which  the  celebrated 
ecclesiastic,  humorist,  and  convivalist,  the  Rev. 
Hamilton  Paul,  published  along  with  an  edition  of 
the  "Poems  and  Songs"  in  1819.  This  work  in 
turn  led  up  to  a  much  more  important  work,  con- 
ceived in  a  similar  spirit.  John  Gibson  Lockhart's 
Life,  published  in  1828,  still  holds  its  own  as  one  of 
the  standard  biographies  of  Bums.  As  all  the 
world  knows,  it  was  the  work  of  Lockhart  which 
called  forth  the  celebrated  Essay  of  Carlyle,  which 
is  at  once  one  of  the  great  masterpieces  of  Burns 
criticism,  and  the  high-water  mark  of  its  author's 
earlier  and,  as  many  folk  think,  its  better  style. 

The  publication  of  Lockhart's  Life  marks  a 
stage — as  it  clovsed  a  generation — of  Burns  Biography, 
Lives  and  editions  now  poured  forth  on  both  sides  of 
the  Border  with  a  rapidity  almost  as  extraordinary 
as  the  growth  of  Burns  clubs,  and  testifying,  like 
that  unique  phenomenon,  to  the  permanent  fascina- 
tion of  the  poet's  life  and  personality.  They  are  far 
too  numerous  to  mention;  but  the  first  Aldine 
edition,  published  in  three  volumes  in  1839  along 
with  a  memoir  by  Sir  Harris  Nicholas,  merits  a  word 
of  attention,  both  for  the  fresh  poems  of  Bums  which 
were  published  in  it,  and  also  as  being  the  first  im- 
portant work  on  Burns  that  was  published  in  Eng- 
land.    And  it  became  a  fashion  with  Scottish  poets 


I20  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

to  edit  the  works  of  their  acknowledged  pioneer  and 
master.  In  1834  "honest" — but  by  no  means  invar- 
iably accurate — Allan  Cunningham  published  an  edi  • 
tion  of  Burns  in  eight  volumes,  along  with  a  life 
which  derives  some  weight  from  the  fact  that  its 
author  was  a  Dumfriesshire  man,  and  claimed  special 
acquaintance  with  the  last  seven  years  of  the  poet's 
life.  James  Hogg  and  William  Motherwell  pub- 
lished an  edition  of  Burn's  works  in  1836;  the  fifth 
volume  of  this  edition  is  a  biography  written  by 
James  Hogg.  Among  the  other  Scottish  poets  who 
had  tried  their  hands  at  editing  Burn's  works,  or 
writing  his  life,  are  Alexender  Smith,  who  prepared 
the  well-known  Globe  edition  of  the  "Life  and 
Works  of  Burns"  (1868);  Principal  Shairp  of  St. 
Andrews,  whose  monograph  on  the  poet  in  the 
"English  Men  of  Letters"  series  (1879)  raised  a 
controversy  which  has  not  yet  been  f<jrgotten,  and  is 
notable  as  having  led  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  to 
write  "  Some  Aspects  of  Robert  Burns,"  which  takes 
rank  w^ith  Wilson's  eloge  and  Carlyle's  essay;  the 
Rev.  George  Gilfillan,  whose  National  Burns  ap- 
peared in  1878-79;  Professor  Nichol,  who  in  1882 
contributed  a  biographical  and  critical  essay  on 
Burns  to  William  Scott  Douglas's  six-volume  edition 
of  the  Poems  and  Letters  (published  by  Mr.  Patter- 
son of  Edinburgh);  and  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  who  con- 
tributed an  Introduction  to  "Selected  Poems  of 
Robert  Burns." 

Meanwhile^  the  necessity  for  investigating  every 
incident  in  Burn's  life  separately  and  much  more 
thoroughly  than  had  been  done  by  Currie  and  Lock- 
hart  had  become  obvious,  and  had  be^n  emphasized 
by  the  publication  of  the  celebrated  Clarinda  corres- 
pondence, first  irregularly  in  1802,  and  in  a  more 
complete  form  in  1843,  This  necessity  was  seen  by 
no  man  more  than  by  Robert  Chambers,  who,  al- 
ways an  enthusiastic  and  painstaking  student  of 
Burns,    had    edited    (1838)    one    of    the    numerous 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  121 

editions  of  Ciirrie,  and  in  1840  had,  in  conjunction 
with  Professor  Wilson,  produced  "The  Land  of 
Burns,"  which  is  still  the  standard  work  on  Burns 
topog^raphy.  Dr.  Chambers's  investigations  further 
led  him  to  the  conclusion  that  of  no  poet  can  it  be 
said  so  absolutely  as  of  Burns  that  his  works  form 
part  of  his  life.  The  great  majority  both  of  his 
poems  and  of  his  letters  reflect  his  moods — his  des- 
pair, the  anxiet}^  and  remorse  due  to  his  "thought- 
less follies;"  his  all  embracing  love  of  nature  and 
humanity,  the  ecstacies  on  the  wings  of  which  he 
soared  above  the  circumstances  of  his  life.  Dr. 
Chambers  perceived  that  to  separate  the  biography 
of  the  poet  from  the  poems  and  letters  was  to  effect 
an  unnatural  divorce,  as  they  were  portions  of  one 
astonishing  if  not  stupendous  whole.  This  connec- 
tion was  strengthened  by  the  researches  of  another 
very  painstaking  student  of  Burns,  William  Scott 
Douglas,  which  culminated  in  the  famous  paper 
which  he  read  before  the  Society  of  Scottish  Antiqu- 
aries in  January,  1850,  and  which  rendered  it  almost 
certain  that  Burns's  betrothal  to  Highland  Mary  was 
an  episode  in  that  attachment  which  ended  in  Jean 
Armour  becoming  his  wife.  Dr.  Chambers  followed 
up  this  paper  by  independent  discoveries  in  Green- 
ock, which  proved,  among  other  things,  that  the 
Mary  Campbell  whom  all  but  universally  accepted 
belief  has  identified  with  the  Highland  Lassie  of 
Burns's  verse  and  prose  must,  if  the  story  of  her 
relatives  can  be  accepted  at  all,  have  been  buried  in 
the  West  Kirkyard  of  that  town  immediately  after 
the  acquisition  of  a  "lair"  there  by  her  brother-in- 
law  on  October  12,  1786.  The  labors  of  Dr.  Cham- 
bers, who  had  been  placed  in  possession  of  all  the  in- 
formation at  the  disposal  of  Burns's  surviving  rela- 
tives, and  of  his  youngest  sister,  Mrs.  Begg,  were 
crowned  especially  by  the  publication,  in  1851-52,  of 
his  "Life  of  Burns"  in  four  volumes.  This  work 
was  at  once  recognized  b}^  the  public  as  the  authori- 


122  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

tative  biography  of  Bums,  representing  his  life  as  an 
organic  whole,  in  which  letters,  poems,  and  incidents 
form  a  "harmony  not  understood" — that  indeed 
could  not  have  been  imderstood — by  previous  editors 
and  biographers. 

Nearly  half  a  century  has  elapsed  since  Dr. 
Chambers  great  work  was  published.  Since  then, 
innumerable  editions  of  Burns's  works,  and  not  a 
few  biographies,  have  been  published  in  England,  in 
America,  and  even  on  the  continent,  where  the 
Burns  cult  is  spreading  with  marvelous  rapidity. 
Among  the  most  remarkable  of  these  lives  are  the 
highly  original  "spiritual"  biography  of  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Hately  Waddell,  published  in  1869,  and  the  Life 
in  two  volumes  given  to  the  w^orid  in  1893  by  M. 
Auguste  Angellier,  a  professor  in  Lille.  M.  Angel- 
lier's  book  is  a  remarkable  performance  in  many 
ways, — well  informed,  scholarly  and  full  of  enthus- 
iasm. To  find  a  parallel  to  Burns,  he  goes  not  to 
"the  too  didactic  Hesiod,  nor  the  precise  Theocrit- 
us," but  to  "the  marvellous  verses  of  Aristophanes." 
There  "we  find  the  countryman  speaking  for  him- 
self, loving  the  earth  unphilosophically,  simply  for 
the  benefit  he  derives  from  it,  and  the  labor  it  asks 
of  him."  But  Mr.  Angellier's  w^ork  is  mainly  nota- 
ble for  his  strenuous  and,  on  the  whole,  wonderfully 
successful  effort  to  translate  Bum^  into  French. 

Not  only  is  Burns  literature  increasing  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  but  it  is  being  specialized.  For  ex- 
ample, the  books  more  or  less  of  a  biographical  na- 
ture which  have  been  written  on  Highland  Mary  al- 
most vie  in  number  and  in  passion  with  those  which 
have  been  evoked  by  the  beauty  and  tragic  story  of 
her  namesake,  the  Queen  of  Scots,  Nor  is  it  all  an 
exaggeration  to  say  that  the  controversial  literature 
which  has  arisen  out  of  the  question  whether  Burns, 
w^hen  he  lived  in  Edinburgh,  was  formally  installed 
as  Laureate  of  the  Canongate  Kilwinning  Lodge  of 
Freemasons  is  equal  in  dimensions  to  the  biographs 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC,  123 

of  Currie  and  Lockhart  combined.  The  process  of 
Burns  specialization  has  been  greatly  encouraged  by 
the  establishment  of  Burns  Clubs  all  over  the  world. 
Some  missing  links  in  the  chain  of  biography,  in  the 
form  both  of  poems  and  letters,  have  been  found  in 
the  course  of  the  last  forty-three  years.  Most  of 
these — including  some  which  have  never  yet  seen 
the  light — were  recovered  by  Dr.  Chambers,  who 
continued  to  the  end  of  his  life  an  indefatigable  col- 
lector of  all  information  bearing  on  his  favorite  sub- 
ject. Certain  aspects  of  Burn's  life  also  merit 
further  exploration.  The  full  story  of  his  stay  in 
Irvine  has  to  be  related.  The  v^'hole  truth  has  not 
been  told  of  the  circumstances  under  which  he  con- 
templated exile  to  Jamaica.  The  last  word  has  not 
been  said  on  Highland  Mary.  Above  all  things, 
fresh  investigations  into  the  life  of  Burns  in  Dum- 
fries tend  happily  to  give  him  a  higher  claim,  not  to 
the  love  and  admiration, — for  a  higher  claim  to  these 
he  cannot  have — but  to  the  respect  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen. 

The  researches  of  the  last  forty-three  years  have 
left  unshaken  the  vast  majority  of  the  statements  of 
facts  which  Dr.  Chambers  embodies  in  his  biography. 
But  they  have  further  demonstrated  the  wisdom  of 
the  general  plan  v/hich  he  adopted.  The  national 
feeling  of  Scotland  for  Burns  has  rendered  the  peri- 
odical rectification,  elucidation,  and  consolidation  of 
his  biography  a  sacred  duty;  and  it  is  in  the  per- 
formance of  this  duty  that  the  publishers  of  Dr. 
Chambers's  Life  issued  in  1896  a  revised  edition  of 
that  work,  containing  the  later  discoveries  of  its 
author  and  of  other  Burns  students  who  have  fol- 
lowed in  his  footsteps. 


124  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 


THE  STORY  OF  ''CLARINDA." 

On  December  7,  1787,  on  Burns's  return  from 
the  Highland  tour,  he  met,  at  the  table  of  a  com- 
mon friend,  Mrs.  M'Lehose,  a  lady  whose  husband 
had  gone  to  the  West  Indies  and  left  her  with  limited 
means  to  bring  up  two  children  in  retirement  in 
Potterow.  Handsome,  lively,  well  read,  of  easy 
manners  and  a  ready  wit,  a  writer  of  verses,  senti- 
mental, and  yet  ardent,  she  was  born  in  the  same 
year  as  Burns,  and  told  him  that  she  shared  his  dis- 
positions, and  would  have  been  his  twin  brother  had 
she  been  a  man.  Two  such  beings  were  obviously 
made  for  one  another,  and  they  lost  no  time  in  find- 
ing it  out.  If  he  was,  as  lawyers  maintain,  at  this 
time  a  married  man,  he  did  not  know  it;  but  she 
was  sure  that  she  w\is  only  a  grass  widows  and  she 
was  virtuous.  Their  correspondence  must,  there- 
fore, be  conducted  with  discretion,  and  "friend- 
ship," not  "  love,"  must  be  their  watchword.  How 
to  reconcile  the  pretence  with  the  reality  was  the 
trouble.  Let  them  take  the  names  of  Clarinda  and 
Sylvander,  and  exchange  their  compliments  with 
the  pastoral  innocence  of  shepherd  and  shepherdess 
in  the  golden  age.  So  it  went  on.  Letters  flying 
to  and  fro  like  carrier  pigeons,  then  greetings  from 
windows,  visits,  risks,  reconcilings,  fresh  assigna- 
tions, reproaches  and  reconciliations,  wearisome  to 
us,  alternately  tantalising,  and  alluring  to  the  mutu- 
ally fascinated  pair.  It  was  no  case  of  mere  phi- 
landering. Beneath  all  Ciarinda's  verbiage  there 
throbs  the  pulse  of  real  passion  afraid  of  itself,  and 
yet  incapable  of  surrendering  its  object.  Sylvander 
writes  more  like  an  artist,  never  with  so  much 
apparent  affectation  as  in  many  of  these  letters — 
fustian  and  bombast  they  often  are,  but  as  to  their 
being  falsetto  is  another  matter.  In  February  he 
had   news   from    Mauchline,    which    naturally   dis- 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  125 

tressed,  and  seems,  less  naturally,  to  have  surprised 
him.  Jean  was  again  about  to  become  a  mother, 
and  this  time  her  father  turned  her  out  of  the 
house.  Burns  rushed  to  the  rescue,  and  shortly 
came  to  the  resolve  to  throw  over  his  poetical  grass 
widow  and  do  his  duty  by  the  girl  who  for  him  had 
given  up  everything.  In  a  note  he  says  that  his 
wife  had  read  nothing  but  the  Bible  and  his  verses 
(in  singing  which  he  often  praises  her  voice)  but 
that  his  marriage  had  taken  him  ' '  out  of  his  vil- 
lany."  Clarinda,  how^ever,  was  of  an  opposite 
opinion,  and  on  the  news  wrote  him  a  furious  letter, 
calling  him  "a  villian,"  an  accusation  to  which  in  a 
dignified  reply  of  March,  1789,  he  refuses  to  plead 
guilty,  being  **  convinced  of  innocence  though  con- 
scious of  folly."  Three  years  later,  in  November, 
1 791,  he  bitterly  writes  to  Ainslie.  "  My  wife  scolds 
me,  my  business  torments  me,  and  my  sins  come 
staring  me  in  the  face. "  It  is  at  this  period  that 
Clarinda  again  flashes  with  vivid  lustre  across  the 
scene.  The  intermittent  correspondence  thickened, 
and  towards  the  close  of  November  he  went  to 
Edinburgh  and  spent  a  week  mainly  in  her  company. 
To  their  farewell  meeting  on  the  6th  of  December 
there  are  several  fervent  allusions.  From  Dum- 
fries on  his  return  we  have  on  the  15th,  "This  is 
the  sixth  letter  that  I  have  written  since  I  left  you, 
my  ever  beloved."  Shortly  after  he  sends  the 
verses  "Ae  fond  kiss  and  then  we  sever,"  with  the 
quatrain — 

Had  we  never  loved  sae  kindly, 
Had  we  never  loved  sae  blindly, 
Never  met  or  never  parted, 
We  had  ne'er  been  broken  hearted — 

which,  quoted  by  Byron,  admired  by  Carlyle  and 
Mr.  Arnold, is  the  quintesscence  of  passionate  regret. 
More  than  a  year  elapsed,  during  which  Mrs. 
M'Lehose  had  gone  to  the  Indies  and,  finding  her 


126  THE  BUR^S  ALMANAC. 

husband  surrounded  by  a  troop  of  small  mulattoes, 
had  come  back  again.  In  an  old  woman's  diary  of 
1831,  is  tlie  following-  inscription:  — "This  day  I 
can  never  forget.  Parted  with  Burns  in  the  year 
1 791,  forty  years  ago,  never  more  to  meet  in  this 
world.  Oh,  may  we  meet  in  heaven."  The  writer 
survived  till  1841,  reaching  the  age  of  82.  It  was 
Clarinda. 


BURNS   IN   WESTMINSTER  ABBEY. 


The  monumental  bust  in  marble  of  the  poet,  the 
cost  of  which  was  provided  by  subscriptions  of  not 
more  than  one  shilling  each,  contributed  by  his 
countrymen  and  admirers  all  over  the  world,  was,  in 
the  presence  of  a  large  and  influential  assembly  of 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  unveiled  on  March  7th,  1885, 
in  the  Poets'  Corner,  Westminster  Abbey,  by  the 
Right  Hon.  the  Earl  of  Rosebery.  Prior  to  proceed- 
ing to  the  Poets'  Corner  the  company  met  in  the 
Jerusalem  Chamber,  but  the  attendance  was  so  great 
that  the  meeting  was  adjourned  to  the  large  dining 
hall  connected  with  the  Westminster  School.  The 
Dean  of  Westminster  presided. 

Preceptor  Wilson  said: — My  Lord,  ladies,  and 
gentlemen,  in  name  of  the  committee  of  which  I 
have  the  honor  to  be  chairman,  I  have  to  thank  you 
for  your  presence  here  to-day,  and  more  especially 
the  Dean  of  Westminster,  for  so  kindly  granting  us 
the  use  of  this  chamber.  The  movement  that  has 
brought  us  together  this  day,  like  many  great  move- 
ments, had  a  very  small  beginning.  It  happened  in 
this  wise.  A  meeting  of  trades'  representatives  in 
Glasgow  had  been  convened  for  the  purpose  of  set- 
tling the  order  of  procession  when  the  statue  to  our 
national  poet  was  unveiled  by  Lord  Haughton,  a  day 
never  to  be  forgotten  in  Glasgow,  when  a  suggestion 


THE    BURNS  ALMANAC,  127 

was  thrown  out  that  the  time  had  surely  come  when 
a  monumental  bust  of  Burns  mioht  be  placed  in  the 
Poets'  Corner  of  Westminster  Abbey.  The  sug-ges- 
tion  met  with  enthusiastic  approval,  and  steps  were 
taken  there  and  then  to  raise  subscriptions.  It  was 
felt  that  if  the  movement  was  to  be  not  only  nation- 
al, but  I  might  say  universal,  the  amount  of  individ- 
ual subscriptions  should  be  limited  to  not  more  than 
a  shilling,  the  same  sum  that  raised  the  statue  in 
George  Square,  Glasgow.  To-day  you  will  see  the 
realization  of  this  idea.  I  need  not  deal  on  the  vast 
labor  connected  with  a  monument  so  unique,  for  I 
presume  there  is  no  monumental  bust  in  the  Abbey 
that  has  been  raised  by  the  shillings  and  pence  of  so 
many  admirers.  Prince  and  peasant  gave  their  con- 
tributions, and  I  may  add  these  contributions  came 
to  us  from  all  ends  of  the  earth.  Switzerland,  Ben- 
gal, New  Zealand,  Nova  Scotia,  Canada,  United 
States  of  America  (north  and  south).  South  Africa, 
London,  Birmingham,  Bradford,  Halifax,  Leicester, 
Liverpool,  Norwich,  Belfast,  Limerick,  Londonderry, 
and  from  nearly  every  town  in  Scotland.  All  the 
Scotch  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  gave 
their  shillings:  more  was  offered,  but  more  could 
not  be  received.  Some  twenty-two  members  of  the 
House  of  Lords  gave  their  shillings,  and  at  the  head 
of  the  list  was  His  Royal  Highness  the  Prince  of 
Wales.  In  short,  we  have  in  our  lists  some  20,000 
contributors.  In  selecting  an  artist  for  the  monu- 
mental bust  of  Bums  the  committee  had  great  diffi- 
culty. It  was  said,  and  said  truly,  that  as  Burns 
was  not  only  the  national  poet  of  Scotland,  but  be- 
longed to  the  human  race,  all  nations  might  claim 
him  as  expressing  in  some  measure  their  national 
feelings.  No  doubt  all  this  was  true,  but  the  com- 
mittee felt  at  the  same  time  that  the  whole  move- 
ment was  so  full  of  Scottish  national  feeling,  that 
Bums  was  so  distinctly  a  Scottish  poet,  and  that  the 
bust  was  to  be  a  Scottish  gift  to  the  British  national 


128  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

shrine,  that  the  case  required  it  should  be  executed 
by  a  Scottish  artist.  In  the  veteran  artist  Sir  John 
Steell,  of  the  Royal  Scottish  Academy,  whose  ab- 
sence we  all  so  much  regret  this  day,  we  found  a 
man  after  our  own  heart,  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of 
the  poet,  and  who  executed  some  years  ago  the 
Burns  statue  at  New  York,  which  has  since  been  re- 
peated on  behalf  of  Dundee,  London  and  Dunedin. 
In  carrying  out  the  commission  the  sculptor  has 
shown  that  his  hand  still  retains  its  ancient  cunning. 
I  will  make  only  one  further  observation,  viz:  the 
bust  is  no  fancy  portraiture  of  the  poet,  but  the  re- 
sult of  careful  study  of  Nasmyth's  authentic  portrait, 
the  original  of  which  is  in  the  National  Gallery  at 
Edinburgh.  The  site  so  graciously  granted  by  the 
Dean  and  Chapter  of  Westminster  is,  we  think,  the 
most  appropriate  that  could  have  been  chosen,  even 
had  the  opportunity  of  selection  presented  itself  very 
many  years  ago,  and  long  before  the  Abbey  had 
been  so  well  filled  as  it  now  is  with  similar  memor- 
ials and  monuments  to  the  illustrious  dead.  The 
bust  has  been  erected  on  the  stone  screen  in  the 
centre  of  which  is  the  splendid  statue  of  Shake- 
speare, England's  and  the  world's  greatest  dramatist 
and  poet.  To  the  right  of  Shakespeare  stands  the 
statue  of  Glasgow's  greatest  poet,  Thomas  Camp- 
bell, author  of  the  "  Pleasures  of  Hope,"  "Ye  Mar- 
iners of  England, "  and  other  lyrics  that  will  last  as 
long  as  the  English  language.  To  the  left  of  Shake- 
speare is  the  monument  to  the  poet  Thomson,  an- 
other working  Scotchman,  and  author  of  *'The  Sea- 
sons," &c.,  and  on  a  level  with  the  bust  of  Burns  is 
the  tablet  and  monumental  bust  to  the  memory  of 
Robert  Southey,  the  immediate  predecessor  of  Lord 
Tennyson,  our  illustrious  Laureate.  I  am  afraid  I 
have  detained  you  too  long  from  the  interesting 
ceremony  still  before  you.  I  shall  not,  in  this  dis- 
tinguished company,  say  one  word  on  the  character 
and  genius  of  Burns,  for  that  was  so  well  and  so  elo- 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  129 

quently  said  by  Lord  Rosebery  on  a  recent  occasion ; 
but  I  may  again  be  pardoned  if  I  remind  you  that 
the  poet  had  some,  it  may  be  dim,  vision  of  this  day 
when  he  penned  the  memorable  lines  so  familiar  to 
us  all  from  our  childhood.  Speaking  of  himself,  he 
makes  the  "gossip  "  say — 

"  He'll  hae  misfortunes  great  and  sma', 
But  aye  a  heart  abune  them  a', 
He'll  be  a  credit  to  us  a' — 
We'll  a'  be  prood  o'  Robin." 

In  conclusion,  let  me  add  how  appropriate  it  is 
that  this  monumental  bust  of  our  Scottish  national 
poet  should  be  placed  in  this  glorious  temple,  the 
pride  of  our  country,  consecrated  to  Almighty  God, 
and  where  the  song  of  the  angels  has  so  often  been 
sung — "Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  peace  on 
earth,  and  goodwill  to  men ;"  paraphrased  by  Burns, 
in  his  ever  to  be  remembered  "  wood  notes  wild" — 

"Then  let  us  pray  that  come  it  may, 
As  come  it  will  for  a'  that, 
That  man  to  man  the  world  o'er 
Shall  brithers  be  and  a'  that." 

In  the  name  of  the  committee  I  have  again  to 
thank  you  for  your  attendance  here  on  this  red-letter 
day  for  Scotland  and  Scotchman  all  the  world  over, 
and  I  have  most  respectfully  to  ask  the  Right  Hon. 
the  Earl  of  Rosebery  to  proceed  to  unveil  the  bust, 
and  hand  it  over,  with  the  nation's  thanks,  to  the 
safe  keeping  of  Dean  Bradley  and  the  Chapter  of 
Westminster  Abbey. 

The  Earl  of  Rosebery  said — Mr.  Dean,  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  it  will  be  impossible  for  me  to  say 
more  than  one  or  two  words  on  this  most  interesting 
and  most  auspicious  occasion.  In  the  first  place,  I 
was  told  I  was  not  to  say  anything;  in  the  next 
place,  I  am  expected  to  return  at  once  to  an  assem- 
bly which  I  will  not  mention  for  fear  I  should 
trench  upon  the  forbidden  ground  of  politics;  and 


I30  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

in  the  third  place,  as  this  is  the  third  effigy  of  Burns 
I  have  unveiled  within  the  last  two  years,  it  will  be 
better  to  refrain  from  any  further  discourse  on  that 
immortal  topic.  Mr.  Dean,  I  must  be  allowed, 
however,  to  return  to  you,  in  the  name  of  the  sub- 
scribers who  are  here  present  and  the  subscribers 
who  are  absent,  because  they  could  not  all  be  con- 
tained in  this  or  any  other  hall,  our  sincere  thanks 
not  merely  for  the  courtes}^  which  you  have  dis- 
played to  us  in  the  course  of  our  dealings  with  you, 
but  for  the  spontaneity  and  readiness  with  which 
you  agreed  to  admit  the  bust  within  the  walls  of 
which  you  are  the  trustee.  In  past  days  many  were 
admitted  into  Westminster  Abbey  whom  a  stricter 
scrutiny  would  probably  be  disposed  to  reject,  and 
the  result  is  that  the  walls  of  that  structure  are  so 
encumbered  with  various  memorials  and  various 
tablets  that  it  is  hardly  possible  now  to  find  a  place 
in  Poets'  Corner  for  anybody.  We  therefore  take  it 
as  a  greater  compliment  from  you,  Mr.  Dean,  that 
you,  without  hesitation  and  without  reluctance,  in 
the  happiest  and  most  friendly  terms  at  once 
accorded  some  of  the  few  remaining  inches  of  space 
to  a  bust  held  dear  by  so  large  a  proportion  of  your 
countrymen.  As  regards  the  ceremony  of  this  day, 
I  think  it  can  be  summed  up  in  two  very  brief  sen- 
tences. As  regards  the  trustees  of  our  national 
temple  of  fame,  the  spontaneous  welcome  which 
they  have  accorded  to  the  effigy  of  Burns  nearly  a 
century  after  his  death  seems  to  me  to  represent  not 
the  partiality  of  friends  or  the  enthusiasm  of 
devotees,  but  the  voice  and  judgment  of  posterity 
itself.  And  as  regards  the  subscribers  who  offer  it, 
we  feel  that  in  handing  over  to  the  Abbey  this  bust 
we  are  bringing  the  very  choicest  offering  that  we 
can  bring  to  the  shrine  of  the  empire. 

The  Dean  of  Westminster  said  —  My  Lord 
Rosebery,  Preceptor  Wilson,  and  all  the  Scottish 
friends  who  are  here,  I  may  assure  you  that  it  is  in 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  131 

a  spirit  of  something  warmer  than  cordial  acquies- 
cence that  we  Englishmen  have  rejoiced  to  crown 
to-day  the  efforts  of  Scotsmen  in  all  quarters  of  the 
globe  by  placing  a  memorial  of  your  great  poet  in 
that  part  of  our  historic  church  which  for  more  than 
three  centuries  has  been  sacred  to  the  memory  of 
our  national  poets  We  need  not,  I  think,  regret 
that  such  homage  may  seem  at  first  sight  somewhat 
tardy.  If  all  but  90  years  have  passed  since  your 
poet's  death,  we  may  remember  that  for  a  century 
and  a  half  the  dust  of  Chaucer  lay  unmarked  and 
unhonored  by  any  monument.  Nearly  as  long  a 
period  went  by  before  any  record  of  Shakespeare 
found  a  place  upon  our  walls.  Even  Milton's  name 
was  for  more  than  two  generations  unnoticed,  except 
for  a  passing  reference  in  the  inscription  to  a  for- 
gotten poet.  And  of  Burns,  as  his  great  brother 
poets,  no  verdict  of  posterity  will  reverse  our  judg- 
ment. The  three  generations  that  have  passed 
since  the  death  of  the  Ayrshire  peasant  saddened 
Scotland  and  smote  the  heart  of  England  with  the 
thought  "of  mighty  poets  in  their  misery  dead," 
have  only  increased  the  interest  of  mankind  in  the 
man,  have  only  raised  the  deliberate  estimate  of  his 
marvellous  genius.     In  his  own  well-known  words — 

*•  Time  the  impression  deeper  makes, 
As  streams  their  channels  deeper  wear." 

But  I  feel,  quite  apart  from  the  pressure  of  time,  it 
would  be  impertinent  for  one  who  has  passed  his 
life  in  southern  England  to  speak  to  Scotsmen  of 
the  poetry  of  the  most  universal,  yet  also  the  most 
national,  of  poets,  of  one  who  has  gained  a  hold  on 
the  heart  and  mind  of  his  countrymen  to  which  I 
hardly  know  any  parallel  in  the  history  of  literature. 
What  comer  of  the  habitable  globe  is  there  to  which 
the  restless  foot  and  active  brain  of  Scotchmen  have 
penetrated   that   has   not   echoed   with   his   poetry? 


132  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

His  songs  are  sung  to-day,  let  me  say,  by  your 
brave  countrymen  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile, 

Where  many  dangers  they  must  dare, 
Far  from  the  bonny  banks  of  Ayr. 

But  I  cannot  forget  to-day  that  I  stand  in  the  place 
of  one  who  has  left  on  record  passage  after  passage 
of  singular  interest,  in  which  he  displays  profound 
admiration  of  your  poet  such  as  I  have  found  in  no 
English  writer  with  whom  I  am  acquainted.  If  one 
so  blameless  and  so  pure  in  life  and  thought  as 
Arthur  Stanley  was  not  blind  to  the  darker  side,  to 
the  sadder  side,  of  the  poet's  life,  which  is  recorded 
in  such  tender  and  pathetic  accents  by  the  poet  him- 
self— if  he  ventured  to  speak  of  him  before  a  Scot- 
tish audience  on  Scottish  soil  as  "the  prodigal  son 
of  the  Scottish  Church,"  yet  I  may  ask  what  Eng- 
lishman, I  may  say  what  Scotchman,  ever  entered 
with  fuller  sympathy  or  keener  discrimination  into 
all  that  was  wise  and  enduring  in  his  teaching  ?  You 
gentlemen,  you  Scotsmen,  may  dwell  with  pride  on 
the  invigorating  influence  of  the  genius  of  Burns  in 
rekindling  in  Scotland  the  embers  of  a  warm  and 
passionate  natural  feeling  of  a  love  for  the  scenery, 
the  manners,  the  associations,  the  history  —  the 
romantic  and  inspiring  history — of  your  native  land, 
an  influence  second  only  to  that  of  the  Wizard  of  the 
North.  But  I  may  remind  you  to-day  that  it  was 
not  a  Scotsman  but  an  Englishman,  a  Dean  of 
Westminster,  who,  while  really  sensitive  to  all  that 
we  deplore  in  the  poet's  works  or  character,  yet  did 
not  shrink  from  recognizing  even  a  religious  power 
in  the  "tender  pathos,"  the  "wise  humor,"  the 
"sagacious  penetration"  of  Robert  Burns.  Nay 
more,  he  did  not  shrink  from  placing  him,  in  virtue 
not  of  one  or  two,  but  of  many  of  his  poems,  among 
"the  universal  teachers  of  all  churches."  In  one 
he  recognized,  "if  not  the  theology  of  Calvin,  yet 
certainly  that  of  the   Sermon  on   the   Mount;"  in 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC,  133 

another  "the  most  comprehensive  and  pathetic  of 
prayers  for  a  Christian  household;"  in  a  third  "the 
most  profound  and  pastoral  of  advice  to  youth."  It 
was  not  a  Scot,  but  a  Dean  of  Westminster,  who 
did  not  even  flinch  from  the  "withering  satire" 
with  which  your  poet  assailed  much  of  the  religious 
teaching  of  his  day  "those  keen  sarcasms" — I  quote 
once  more  his  words — "which  pierce  through  the 
hollow  cant  and  harrowing  pretensions  of  every 
Church  with  a  sword  which  cuts  too  sharply,  but 
not  too  deeply."  Nay  more,  he  went  so  far  as  to 
draw  a  parallel  between  the  devout  tinker  of  Bed- 
ford, the  author  of  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and 
one  so  unlike  him  as  the  peasant  poet  of  the  "Cot- 
tar's Saturday  Night."  And  we,  my  Lord,  as  we 
shall  stand  for  a  moment  in  vsilence  by  a  bust  which 
may  recall,  we  trust,  to  far-off  ages,  if  not  the 
"large  dark  eye,  which  glowed,"  as  the  greatest  of 
his  countrymen  said,  "literally  glowed  when  he 
spoke  with  feeling  and  interest,"  yet,  at  least,  the 
massive  countenance  with  strength  and  shrewdness 
in  every  lineament,  we  may  ask  that  the  poet's  best 
legacies  to  his  race,  all  that  is  good  and  beautiful 
and  noble  in  his  poems  may  long  invigorate  and 
enrich  and  delight  mankind  in  every  corner  of  the 
world  where  his  tongue  is  spoken — that  all  that  is 
misleading  or  lowering  may  die  out  of  men's  hearts. 
And  for  himself,  with  all  his  splendid  gifts,  his  great 
qualities,  his  indisputable  virtues,  his  indisputable 
frailties  and  faults,  let  us  be  content — in  the  words 
of  a  poet  who  was  dear  to  him  in  his  youth,  and 
whose  monument  will  not  lie  far  from  his  own — let 
us  be  content  to  leave  them — 

'*  In  their  dread  abode. 
Where  they  alike  in  trembling  hope  repose. 
The  bosom  of  their  Father  and  their  God. ' ' 

The  company,  headed  by  the    Dean   and  Lord 
Rosebery,  then  proceeded  to  the  Poets  Corner,  where, 


134  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

after  a  short  prayer,  by  the  Dean,  Lord  Rosebery 
unveiled  the  bust.  In  addition  to  the  large  gather- 
ing which  had  accompanied  the  Dean  from  the 
Dining  Hall,  there  was  a  numerous  attendance  in 
those  parts  of  the  Abbey  open  to  the  public,  and 
nearly  every  one  present  took  advantage  of  the 
Dean's  permission  to  inspect  the  monument. 

The  bust,  which  is  by  Sir  John  Steell,  R.S.A., 
is  erected  on  a  corbel,  ornamented  in  harmony  with 
the  style  of  the  surrounding  portions  of  the  building. 
It  stands  about  fifteen  feet  from  the  Abbey  floor, 
and  about  three  feet  to  the  right  of  the  bust  of 
Shakespeare.  On  the  left  of  the  great  dramatist  is 
the  memorial  of  another  eminent  Scottish  poet, 
James  Thomson,  the  author  of  "The  Seasons." 
The  sculptor  has  largely  adhered  to  the  leading 
features  of  the  Nasmyth  portrait  of  Burns,  modified 
by  information  from  other  sources. 


MISCONCEPTIONS  REGARDING  BURNS. 

From  an  Address  by  John  D.   Ross 

....  It  is  a  peculiar  fact  that  no  poet  has  received 
the  same  amount  of  censure  and  praise  from  the 
world  at  large  as  has  Robert  Burns.  And  there  are 
many  reasons  for  this.  He  was  in  all  respects  a  poet 
of  the  people.  He  sang  for  the  masses  and  not  for 
the  aristocracy.  He  hated  hyprocrisy  and  shams 
and  allowed  no  opportunity  to  pass  whereby  he  could 
expose  and  hold  up  to  ridicule  either  them  or  their 
authors.  And  in  doing  this  he  made  enemies  for 
himself  right  at  the  beginning  of  his  brilliant  poetical 
career,  enemies  who  continued  to  scatter  lies  and 
foul  accusations  against  him,  not  only  during  his 
brief  and  eventful  life,  but  long  after  he  had  passed 
to  the  Silent  Land. 

Now,  I  am  not  so  blinded  with  enthusiam  for 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  135 

Bums  as  to  claim  that  he  was  what  we  term  to-day, 
a  religious,  temperate  man,  but  I  do  claim  that  his 
faults  have  been  greatly  magnified  and  that  many  of 
them,  were  simply  the  faults  common  to  the  age  in 
which  he  lived.  Hundreds  of  intellectual  and  highly 
cultured  individuals  who  were  famous  as  authors, 
statesmen,  etc.,  in  the  Seventeenth  Century  lived  the 
self  same  kind  of  a  life  as  Robert  Burns  did,  and  yet 
their  various  peculiarities  are  not  blazoned  forth,  or 
pointed  out  as  a  warning  to  posterity.  Indeed,  the 
parties  themselves  or  their  works  are  seldom  men- 
tioned or  heard  tell  of  one  way  or  the  other  now-a- 
days. 

And  how  then  comes  it  that  because  one  of  the 
brightest  geniuses  ever  born  in  Scotland  happened 
in  one  or  two  imguarded  moments  to  falter  in  the 
path  of  virtue  and  on  several  occasions  is  said  to  have 
indulged  too  freely  with  a  few  boon  companions  over 
the  festive  cup  ?  Why  is  it,  I  ask,  that  his  little 
shortcomings  and  failmgs  must  be  continually  par- 
aded by  some  parties  before  the  wondering  gaze  of 
the  unco  guid  and  the  enlightened  generations  con- 
stituting the  Nineteenth  Century?  These  same 
parties  seem  to  forget  or  to  entirely  overlook  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  the  life  of  Burns  his  admirers  are  en- 
thusiastic about,  but  his  high-bom,  unapproachable, 
poetic  genius. 

A  fruitful  source  from  whence  have  emanated 
misconceptions  and  errors  regarding  Bums  and  his 
writings,  may  be  traced,  strange  to  say,  to  his  various 
editors  and  biographers.  These  gentlemen,  with  a 
few  exceptions,  have  taken  the  memoir  of  the  poet, 
written  almost  immediately  after  his  death  by  Dr. 
James  Currie  as  their  guide,  and  whether  the  state- 
ments made  in  that  memoir  by  him  were  true  or  not, 
they  have  never  stopped  to  consider,  but  have  taken 
it  for  granted  that  they  were  and  blindly  followed 
him. 


136  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

New  fads  are  gradually  being-  brought  to  light, 
however,  facts  showing  that  certain  statements  made 
by  Dr.  Currie,  Allan  Cunningham  and  others  are 
both  erroneous  and  false.  Not  only  have  words 
been  omitted  in  his  poems  and  letters,  but  whole 
sentences,  and  lines  and  dates  have  been  deliberately 
tampered  with  and  changed.  So-called  new  editions 
of  his  works  have  been  issued  and  sent  broadcast 
over  the  world,  and  yet  on  investigation  these  new 
editions  prove  to  be  nothing  but  the  very  old  ones  of 
Currie  and  others,  reprinted,  and  full  of  errors  and 
blemishes,  with  a  title  page,  having  a  new  imprint, 
as  w^ell  as  a  new  date  on  it. 

And  so  this  kind  of  thing  has  been  going  on 
since  1800,  when  Dr.  Currie  issued  his  edition  in 
four  volumes,  until  people,  deeply  interested  in  all 
that  concerns  the  poet,  are  taking  the  matter  in  hand, 
and  by  study  and  careful  investigation  are  proving 
that  many  of  the  sayings  and  doings,  which  we  know 
to  the  discredit  of  Burns,  are  simply  myths. 

What  some  fanatics  are  pleased  to  term  "The 
downward  grade  in  the  life  of  Burns,"  began  with 
his  removal  to  Dumfries,  in  1791.  From  this  date 
until  his  death  he  is  credited  by  them  with  all  sorts 
of  wickedness.  He  was  a  libertine,  a  drunkard,  etc. 
Indeed,  we  are  told  that  toward  the  end  of  his  life 
the  better  class  of  society  in  Dumfries  shunned  him 
entirely,  and  we  are  all  familiar  with  the  story  of 
his  walking  alone  and  unheeded  one  day  along  the 
shady  side  of  the  principal  street  in  the  tow^n,  while 
the  other  side  was  crowded  with  gay  ladies  and 
gentlemen. 

Mr.  R.  L.  vStevenson  says,  speaking  of  the  Dum- 
fries period,  ''  Burns  was  thenceforward  incapable, 
except  in  rare  instances,  of  that  superior  effort  of 
concentration,  which  is  required  for  serious  literary 
work.  He  may  be  said,  indeed,  to  have  worked  no 
more,  and  only  amused  himself  with  letters." 

But  surely,    my   friends,    Mr.    Stevenson   must 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  137 

have  been  talking  at  random  when  he  ventured  this 
assertion.  Leaving"  his  other  valuable  work,  such  as 
contributions  to  "Johnson's  Museum"  and  to 
"Thomson's  Collection  "  out  of  the  question,  Burns 
produced  over  100  of  his  best  songs  while  residing  in 
Dumfries,  among  them  being  "Scots  Wha  Hae," 
"  Ae  Fond  Kiss, "  "  A  Man's  a  Man  for  a' That," 
"  Auld  Lang  Syne, "  "Duncan  Gray  Cam'  Here  to 
Woo."  "  Auld  Rob  Morris,"  O,  Whistle  an'  I'll  Come 
to  Ye  My  Lad,"  "My  Love  is  Like  a  Red,  Red 
Rose,"  "  My  Heart  is  wSair,  I  DarnaTell,"  "  O  Wert 
Thou  in  the  Cauld  Blast,"  "Last  May  a  Braw 
Wooer,"  "  Lassie  Wi'  the  Lint  White  Locks  "  and 
others  which  are  widely  known  the  world  over. 
And  it  is  just  such  eminent  men  as  Stevenson  making 
rash  statements  of  this  kind  that  keeps  alive  apit3'ful 
sort  of  prejudice  in  certain  quarters  regarding  the 
poet  and  his  works.  Were  their  statements  true,  no 
one,  of  course,  could  honestly  object  to  them,  but 
therein  lies  the  trouble,  they  are  not  true,  and  the 
parties  are  unable  to  verify  them  when  called  upon 
to  do  so. 

We  have  all  read  and  believed  it  true  that 
Burns,  while  acting  as  an  excise  officer,  was  several 
times  reprimanded  by  his  superiors  for  serious  offen- 
ces. A  few  years  ago,  however,  by  the  discovery  of 
certam  books,  it  was  shown  conclusively  that  such 
was  not  the  case.  These  books  or  diaries  cover  the 
entire  period  of  Burns'  connection  with  the  excise, 
and  his  name  is  only  mentioned  twice  in  them,  once 
in  1792  and  again  in  1795.  Now  listen  to  the  offen- 
ces on  which  his  detractors  have  laid  so  much  stress. 

I  quote  from  a  recent  article  on  the  subject:  "  In 
the  first  instance,  on  May  10,  1792,  Burns,  in  taking 
a  trader's  stock  of  tea,  entered  160  pounds  in  his 
book  instead  of  sixteen  pounds,  which  error  he  him- 
self rectified  on  his  next  visit.  In  the  vsecond  in- 
stance he  neglected  to  visit  a  tanner,  as  he  ought  to 
have  done,  according  to  his  instructions,  on  the  25th 


138  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

of  May,  1795,  an<i  Superintendent  Findlater  came  in 
on  the  following  day  and  discovered  the  omission. 
He  was  not  even  censured  for  these  paltry  mistakes. 

Toward  the  end  of  a  memoir  of  Burns  in  an 
edition  of  his  works  issued  last  year  in  London,  I 
read  as  follows: 

'*  We  are  now  fast  approaching  the  last  scene  of 
this  strange,  sad  history.  His  health  had  seriously 
given  way  in  the  latter  end  of  1795,  and  when  re- 
turning home  from  the  Globe  tavern  one  night  in 
January  of  the  following  year,  he  had  the  misfortune 
to  fall  asleep  in  the  snow\  This  disaster  resulted  in 
an  attack  of  rheumatic  fever,  which  still  further 
enfeebled  his  already  impaired  constitution.  After 
fruitlessly  trying  various  expedients  to  recover  his 
strength,  and  in  the  endurance  of  keen  mental  agony, 
Robert  Bums  died,  his  reason  almost  tottering  on 
its  throne,  on  the  21st  day  of  July,  1796. 

Now,  there  has  always  seemed  something  wrong 
about  this  sleeping  in  the  snow  story  to  me. 

On  the  31st  of  January,  Burns  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Dunlop  about  the  death  of  his  * '  only  daughter  and 
darling  child."  These  are  his  own  words,  and  then 
said,  *'  I  had  scarcely  began  to  recover  from  that 
shock  when  I  became  the  victim  of  a  most  severe 
rheumatic  fever. "  This  letter,  you  notice,  is  dated 
the  31st  of  January.  Lockhart,  as  good  a  biographer 
as  Burns  has  ever  had,  says  that  * '  a  few  days  after 
the  writing  of  this  letter,  he  joined  a  festive  circle 
at  a  tavern  dinner,  etc."  Dr.  Currie  says  that  "from 
October,  1795,  to  the  January  following  an  accidental 
complaint  confined  him  to  the  house.  A  few  days 
later  he  dined  at  a  tavern,  etc."  Alexander  Smith, 
in  an  excellent  and  well-written  life  of  the  poet,  says 
that  **  the  tavern  dinner  took  place  early  in  January," 
and  so  on,  each  has  his  own  idea  on  the  subject,  and 
each  contradicts  the  other — so  which  are  we  to 
believe? 

But  now  let  me  read  an  extract  from  an  article 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  139 

by  William  Wallace  on  this  very  subject.  Mr.  Wal- 
lace, whom  I  acknowledge  to  be  one  of  the  best 
Burns  scholars  of  the  day,  says,  "  There  is  no  word 
of  a  tavern  dinner  as  the  final  cause  of  Burns'  death 
in  Heron's  biograph)''.  There  is  none  in  Hamilton 
Paul's.  There  is  no  word  of  the  Globe  Inn  as  the 
scene  of  the  dinner  in  Currie  or  Lockhart  or  Walker. 
As  for  Lockhart,  he  says  gingerly,  '  It  has  been  satd 
that  he  fell  asleep  upon  the  snow  on  his  way  home.' 
It  is  in  1838,  and  in  a  note  to  a  new  edition  of  Currie, 
then  published,  that  the  Globe  Inn  and  the  sleep  in 
the  snow  story  make  their  definitive  appearance.  It 
runs  thus :  *  It  is  added  as  a  tradition  of  Dumfries 
that  on  his  way  home  he  sat  down  on  some  steps 
projecting  into  the  street,  and  falling  asleep  in  that 
situation  became  fatally  chilled.  *  And  so  it  is  on  a 
tradition  of  nearly  half  a  century  old  that  Bums' 
character  has  been  blasted — a  tradition,  too,  which 
asks  us  to  believe  that  his  companions,  although 
they  preceived  him  to  be  intoxicated,  had  not  the 
common  humanity  to  see  him  safely  home ! 

'*  The  Globe  legend  that  Burns  died  of  a  fever 
caused  in  the  final  resort  by  intoxication  is  therefore 
a  confused  mass  of  contradictory  statements,  and 
may  be  placed  on  the  same  shelf  as  the  almost  iden- 
ical  story  which  is  related  by  the  way  of  accounting 
for  the  death  of  Shakespeare." 


FLOWERS  MENTIONED  BY  BURNS. 

Snowdrop  and  primrose — 
**  The  snowdrop  and  primrose  our  woodlands  adorn, 
And  violets  bath  in  the  weet  o'  the  mom." 

Primrose — 
**  The  primrose  I  will  pu',  the  firstling  o'  the  year." 

Pink — 
**And  I  will  pu'  the  pink,  the  emblem  o'  my  dear." 


I40  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

Rose — 

"I'll  pu'  the  budding  rose  when  Phoebus  peeps  in 
view." 

Balm — 
"  For  its  like  a  baumy  kiss  o'  her  sweet  bonnie  mou. " 

Hyacifith — 
"The  hyacith's  for  constancy,   wi'  its   unchanging 

blue." 

Ltly — 
"The  lily  it  is  pure,  and  the  lily  it  is  fair. 
And  in  her  lovely  bosom  I  place  the  lil}'-  there." 

Daisy — 
"  The  daisy's  for  simplicity  and  unaffected  air." 

Hawthorn — 
"The  hawthorn  I  will  pu'  wi"  its  locks  o'  siller  grey. 
Where  like  an  aged  man  it  stands  at  break  o'  day." 

Woodbine — 
"  The  woodbine  I  will  pu'  when  the  e'ening  star  is 
near." 

Violet— 

"The   violet   for   modesty,    which  weel  she  fa's  to 
wear. 
And  a'  to  be  a  posie  to  my  ain  dear  May." 

Myrtle— 
"  Their  groves   o'  sweet   myrtle   let   foreign   lands 
reckon, 
Where  bright   beaming  summers   exalt   the   per- 
fume." 

Brake  fern — 
"  Far  dearer  to  me  yon  glen  o'  green  breckan." 

Broom — 
"  Wi'  the  burn  stealing  under  the  lang  yellow  broom. " 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  141 

Bluebell  and gowan — 
*' Where  the  bluebell  and  gowan  lurk  lowly  unseen." 
A-list'ning  the  linnet,  aft  wanders  my  Jean." 

Harebells — 
*'  Mourn,  little  harebells  o'er  the  lee." 

Foxgloves — 
*'Ye  stately  foxgloves,  fair  to  see. 

In  scented  bow'rs. " 

Wallflower — 
**  Where  the  wa'flower  scents  the  dewy  air." 

Ivy — 
**  Where  the  howlet  mourns  in  her  ivy  bower. " 

Reeds — 
**  Ye  healthy  wastes,  immixed  with  reedy  fens." 

Sedge  and  rushes — 
* '  Ye  mossy  streams,  with  sedge  and  rushes  stor'd ; 
To  you  I  fly,  ye  with  my  soul  accord." 

Cowslips — 
* '  Now  bank  and  brae  are  clothed  in  green, 
An'  scatter 'd  cowslips  sweetly  spring." 

Poppies — 
*'  But  pleasures  are  like  poppies  spread, 
You  seize  the  flow'r,  its  bloom  is  shed." 

Water  lily — 
**  His  hoary  head  with  water  lilies  crowned." 

Gardener's  garters — 
**  His  manly  leg  with  garter  tangle  bound." 

Brier — 
**  O  bonnie  was  yon  rosy  brier, 
That  blooms  sae  far  frae  haunt  o*  man. " 


142  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC, 

Heather — 
'*  Sweet  brushing  the  dew  from  the  brown  heather 
bells." 

Moss — 
"  Her  color  betrayed  her  on  yon  mossy  fells." 

Thistle — 
* '  The  rong-h  bur- thistle,  spreading  wide, 
I  turned  b}^  weeding  heuk  aside, 
An'  spared  the  symbol  dear." 

Thyme — 
**  Hey  and  the  rue  grows  bonnie  wi'  thyme." 

Rue— 
"  And  the  thj^me  it  is  withered,  and  rue  is  in  prime." 

Lint — 
"  I  bought  my  wife  a  stane  o'  lint." 

Whins — 

'*  She  through  the  whins  and  by  the  cairn, 
An'  ower  the  hill  gaed  screivin'." 

Boortree — 
"Or  rustlin',  thro'  the  boortrees  comin'. " 

Holy— 
"  Green,  slender,  leaf  clad  holy  boughs 
Were  twisted  gracefu'  round  her  brows." 

Sloe  thorn — 
"From  the  white   blossomed  sloe,  my  dear   Chloe 
requested 
A  sprig  her  fair  breast  to  adorn. " 

Lime  and  Orange — 
"  O  sweet  grows  the  lime  and  the  orange." 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  143 

Laurel — 
*'  Then  farewell  hopes  o'  laurel  bows, 
To  garland  my  poetic  brows." 

Many  other  quotations  could  be  made  with 
reference  to  other  plants,  etc.,  connected  with  the 
vegetable  world,  but,  as  they  are  farther  from  the 
subject  than  any  now  taken  notice  of,  I  have  kept 
them  out  of  the  list.  As  already  stated,  some  of 
the  plants  noted  will  not  be  regarded  as  flowers; 
however,  if  such  plants  as  puddock-stools  and  nettles 
were  included,  we  would  be  farther  a-field  than 
ever.  The  list  will  be  found  to  contain  all  the  more 
characteristic  and  emblematic  plants  connected  with 
Britain. 


THE  FUNERAL  OF  ROBERT  BURNS. 

It  was  on  Thursday,  the  21st  of  July,  1796,  that 
the  poet  breathed  his  last  in  the  house  which  the 
Industrial  School  now  adjoins,  and  the  funeral  took 
place  on  the  following  Monday,  25th  July.  It  was 
of  a  public  character,  and  started  from  the  Mid- 
steeple,  to  which  the  body  had  been  removed  on  the 
Sabbath  evening.  Some  confusion  has  unaccount- 
ably arisen  on  this  point,  on  which  there  is  really  no 
room  for  uncertainity.  The  building  has  been 
referred  to  in  some  works  of  a  recent  date  as  the 
Trades  Hall,  which  was  in  the  same  neighborhood, 
but  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  and  was  let  out 
for  meetings  and  entertainments.  But  in  the  report 
of  the  funeral  which  appeared  in  the  Dumfries 
Journal  on  the  following  day  it  is  called  "  the  Town 
Hall;"  and  Mr  William  Grierson,  draper,  who  as  a 
young  man  walked  in  the  posession,  records  in  the 
diary  which  he  kept  at  the  time  that  it  was  in  the 
Court-house  that  the  coffin  was  placed  and  where 
the  mourners  assembled.      This  was  the  large  apart- 


144  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC. 

ment  in  the  upper  story  of  the  Midsteeple,  approach- 
ed by  the  outside  stair,  and  was  at  the  time  the  place 
in  which  the  sittings  of  the  Sheriff  Court  and  the 
Justiciary  Court  were  held.  Public  meetinj^s  of  an 
official  nature,  on  such  questions,  for  example,  as 
national  defense,  were  also  held  within  its  walls,  so 
that  it  might  quite  appropriately  be  spoken  of  as  the 
Town  Hall.  Dumfries  was  at  that  time  never  with- 
out a  contingent  of  military.  The  troops  then 
quartered  in  the  town  were  the  Angus-shire  Fen- 
cibles  (a  force  which  formed  the  precursor  of  the 
of  the  district  militia,  but  which  was  levied  by  con- 
scription ballot),  commanded  by  Major  Fraser,  and  a 
detachment  of  the  Cinque  Ports  Cavalry,  under 
Captain  Findlay.  These  forces  joined  with  the  local 
Volunteers  in  paying  military  honors  to  the  author 
''Scots  whaha'e,"  "Does  haughty  Gaul,"  the  pop- 
ular war-song  of  the  time — "  The  Poor  and  Honest 
Sodger,"  and  the  heroic  soldier's  "  Song  of  Death." 
The  following  is  the  simple  account  of  the  funeral 
which  appeared  in  the  weekly  issue  of  the  local 
newspaper: 

"The  military  here,  consisting  of  the  Cinque 
Ports  Cavalry  and  the  Angus-shire  Fencibles,  having 
handsomely  tendered  their  services,  lined  the  streets 
on  both  sides  to  the  burial  grounds.  The  Royal 
Dumfries  Volunteers  (of  which  he  was  a  member)  in 
uniform,  with  crape  on  their  left  arms,  supported 
the  bier.  A  party  of  that  corps,  appointed  to  per- 
form the  military  obsequies,  moving  in  slow,  solemn 
time  to  "The  Dead  March  in  Saul,"  which  was 
played  by  the  military  band,  preceded  in  mournful 
array,  with  arms  reversed.  The  principal  part  of 
the  inhabitants  of  this  town  and  neighborhood,  with 
a  number  of  the  particular  friends  of  the  bard  from 
remote  parts,  followed  in  possession — the  great  bells 
of  the  churches  tolling  at  intervals.  Arrived  at  the 
at  the  churchyard  gate  the  funeral  party,  according 
to  the  rules  of  that  exercise,  formed  two  lines,  and 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  145 

leaned  their  heads  on  their  firelocks  pointed  to  the 
ground.  Through  this  space  the  corpse  was  carried, 
and  borne  forward  to  the  grave.  The  party  then 
drew  up  alongside  of  it,  and  fired  three  volleys  over 
the  coffin  when  deposited  in  the  earth.  The  whole 
ceremony  presented  a  solemn,  grand,  and  affecting 
spectacle ;  and  accorded  with  the  general  sorrow  and 
regret  for  the  loss  of  a  man  whose  like  we  scarce  can 
see  again. " 

Allan  Cunningham,  who  was  then  serving  his 
apprenticeship  in  Dumfries  as  a  stone  mason,  wit- 
nessed the  funeral  of  his  elder  and  greater  brother 
of  **  the  bardic  race,"  and  years  afterwards  he  pub- 
lished an  account  of  it,  which  showed  that  the  pro- 
ceedings had  greatly  impressed  him ;  but  when  he 
estimates  the  multitude  who  assembled  at  twelve 
thousand,  we  recognize  the  exaggerated  impressions 
of  a  boy  of  twelve.  It  is  worth  while,  however,  to 
quote  what  Cunningham  says  of  the  demeanor  of  the 
townspeople  during  the  last  illness  of  Burns,  for  the 
information  of  the  remnant  who  cling  to  the  myth 
that  he  was  neglected  and  unappreciated  by  his  own 
townspeople.  *'  Dumfries,"  says  Allan,  "was  like  a 
besieged  place.  It  was  known  he  was  dying,  and 
the  anxiety  not  of  the  rich  and  learned  only,  but  of 
the  mechanics  and  peasants  exceeded  all  belief. 
Wherever  two  or  three  people  stood  together  their 
talk  was  of  Bums,  and  of  him  alone.  They  spoke  of 
his  history,  of  his  person,  of  his  works,  of  his  family, 
and  of  his  untimely  approaching  fate,  with  a  warmth 
and  enthusiasm  which  will  ever  endear  Dumfries  to 
my  remembrance.  All  that  he  said  or  was  saying — 
the  opinion  of  the  physicians  (and  Maxwell  was  a 
kind  and  skillful  one)  were  eagerly  caught  up  and 
reported  from  street  to  street.  As  his  life  drew  to  a 
close  the  eager  yet  decorous  solicitude  of  his  fellow- 
townsmen  increased.  It  is  the  practice  of  the  younj^; 
men  of  Dumfries  to  meet  in  the  street  during  the 
hours  of  remission  from  labor,  and  by  these  means  I 


146  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC, 

had  an  opportunity  of  witnessing  the  general  solici- 
tude of  all  ranks  and  of  all  ages.  His  differences 
with  some  of  them  on  some  important  points  were 
forgotten  and  forgiven.  They  thought  only  of  his 
genius ;  of  the  delight  his  compositions  had  diffused ; 
and  they  talked  of  him  with  the  same  awe  as  of  some 
departing  spirit  whose  voice  was  to  gladden  them  no 
more." 

We  reproduce  also  Mr.  Grierson's  account  of 
the  funeral  (to  which  we  have  referred  above)  and 
the  reflections  on  the  subject  which  he  wrote  in  his 
diary : 

"Monday,  25th  July. — This  day  at  12  o'clock 
w^ent  to  the  burial  of  Robert  Burns,  who  died  on  the 
2ist,  aged  38  years.  In  rCvSpect  to  the  memory  of 
such  a  genius  as  Mr.  Burns,  his  funeral  was  uncom- 
monly splendid.  The  military  here  consisted  of  the 
Cinque  Ports  Cavalry  and  Angus-shire  Fencibles, 
who,  having  handsomely  tendered  their  services, 
lined  the  streets  on  both  sides  from  the  Court-house 
to  the  burial  ground.  (The  corpse  was  carried  from 
the  place  where  Mr.  Burns  died  to  the  Court-house 
last  night.)  Order  of  procession:  The  firing  party, 
which  consisted  of  twenty  of  the  Royal  Dumfries 
Volunteers  (of  which  Mr.  Burns  was  a  member),  in 
full  uniform  with  crapes  on  the  left  arm,  marched  in 
front  with  arms  reversed,  moving  in  a  slow  and 
solemn  time  to  the  '  Dead  March  in  Saul, '  which  was 
played  by  the  military  band  belonging  to  the  Cinque 
Ports  Cavalry.  Next  to  the  firing  party  was  the 
band,  then  the  bier  or  corpse  supported  by  six  of 
the  Volunteers,  who  changed  at  intervals.  The 
relations  of  the  deceased  and  a  number  of  the  re- 
spectable inhabitants  of  both  town  and  country 
followed  next.  Then  the  remainder  of  the  Volun- 
teers followed  in  rank,  and  the  procession  closed  with 
a  guard  of  Angus-shire  Fencibles.  The  great  bells 
of  the  churches  tolled  at  intervals  during  the  time  of 
the  procession.      When    arrived   at    the    churchyard 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.  147 

gate,  the  funeral  party  formed  two  lines,  and  leaned 
their  heads  on  their  firelocks  pointed  to  the  ground. 
Through  this  space  the  corpse  was  carried  and 
borne  to  the  grave.  The  party  then  drew  up  along- 
side of  it,  and  fired  three  volleys  over  the  coffiin 
when  deposited  in  the  earth.  Thus  closed  a  cere- 
mony which,  on  the  whole,  presented  a  solemn, 
grand,  and  affecting  spectacle,  and  accorded  with 
the  general  sorrow  and  regret  for  the  loss  of  a  man 
whose  like  we  can  scarce  see  again.  As  for  his 
private  character  and  behavior,  it  might  not  have 
been  so  fair  as  could  have  been  wished,  but  whatever 
faults  he  had,  I  believe  he  was  always  worse  for 
himself,  and  it  becomes  us  to  pass  over  his  failings 
in  silence,  and  with  veneration  and  esteem  look  to 
his  immortal  works,  which  will  live  forever.  I  be- 
lieve his  extraordinary  genius  may  be  said  to  have 
been  the  cause  of  bringing  him  so  soon  to  his  end, 
his  company  being  courted  by  all  ranks  of  people, 
and  being  of  too  easy  and  accommodating  a  temper, 
which  often  involved  him  in  scenes  of  dissipation  and 
intoxication,  which  by  slow  degrees  impaired  his 
health,  and  at  last  totally  ruined  his  constitution. 
For  originality  of  wit,  rapidity  of  conception,  and 
fluency  of  nervous  phraseology  he  was  unrivalled. 
He  has  left  a  wife  and  five  children  in  very  indigent 
circumstances,  but  I  understand  very  liberal  and 
extensive  subscriptions  are  to  be  made  for  them. 
His  wife  was  delivered  of  a  child  about  an  hour  after 
he  was  removed  from  the  house." 


MANUSCRIPT  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.        149 


iS6         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.         151 


152         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.  153 


154  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS,  NOTES,         155 


156  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES,         157 


[58  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BUR.NS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.  159 


i6o  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS,  N0TE6.         ^i 


i62  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.         163 


i64  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC.-^MS.  NOTES, 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC—MS.  NOTES.         165 


i66         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.        167 


i6a         THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE.  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS,  NOTES.         169 


lyo  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.         171 


p/9  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC^MS.  NOTES, 


THE  BURISIS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.  173 


174  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES.  175 


176  THE  BURNS  ALMANAC— MS.  NOTES. 


